‘Why read Ukrainian poets or any poets in translation for that matter?” wrote poet Ilya Kaminsky in March 2022, weeks after Russia escalated its war on Ukraine. “Because if we don’t read poets in translation, we end up looking in the mirror 24/7.”
These recently translated works by Ukrainian poets and novelists contemplate domestic life, language, economics, culture and violence in the country. Though many were written before 2022, all reach forward into the present, offering resonant snapshots of a country beset by war.
***
Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky
Magic, witchcraft and astrology infuse Belorusets’s collection of absurdist stories about women in Ukraine. A midwife curses a neighbourhood; a woman turns a teapot into a fan; a group hiding underground to avoid shelling relies on hour-by-hour horoscopes in the local paper for indications as to when it is safe to emerge for walks.
The title is ironic: far from having any “lucky breaks”, Belorusets’ women are disillusioned, moving between towns and cities with scant economic opportunity. And in some stories, they are abruptly erased – a florist disappears leaving no trace, her shop turned into a warehouse for propaganda materials, her house destroyed, her regular customers having left Donetsk “long ago”. In vignettes no longer than a few pages, Belorusets recounts stories of women existing in the margins.
***
The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye, translated by Zenia Tompkins
Chapeye blends memoir and fiction in this eclectic study of life in Ukraine. Written between 2010 and 2018, the stories offer candid, darkly funny observations on topics ranging from domestic squabbles to rural life and crime.
What becomes obvious is Chapeye’s love for travel and the truths it reveals. In the title story, a journeying couple laugh about the English misuse of the definite article in reference to Ukraine, and begin pointing out things, people, events that they believe represent “the Ukraine” – aka the “real” Ukraine. One such example is what Chapeye calls the “romance of decline”: unfinished concrete buildings, faded statues of Soviet Pioneers, an abandoned Pioneers camp with rusted swings.
***
How Fire Descends by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Alongside his writing, Zhadan is frontman of a ska band, Zhadan and the Dogs. He also helps to organise the delivery of humanitarian aid in Kharkiv, which has been under constant attack since Russia’s all-out invasion began two years ago.
His most recent poetry collection focuses on gaps: in language, between people, between the living and the dead. This void, this “silence”, is returned to so many times that it becomes a character in itself, anthropomorphised: “Silence warm like a lamb in your arms.” One of the collection’s first poems, written on 11 September 2022 – the day a Russian strike caused power outages across Kharkiv – reads like a statement of purpose: “Remember everything that disappears like a traveller descending / a hill. / Saying it out loud will drive away the silence and ward off trouble.”
***
Mondegreen: Songs About Death and Love by Volodymyr Rafeyenko, translated by Mark Andryczyk
Born and educated in Donetsk, Rafeyenko wrote exclusively in Russian until he left for Kyiv after his native city was overtaken by pro-Russian rebels in 2014. Appalled that Russia claimed it was attempting to protect Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, Rafeyenko vowed to learn Ukrainian and write his next novel in the language. This became Mondegreen.
The novel follows Haba Habriel Habinsky, a refugee who, like Rafayenko, moves to Kyiv to escape his war-struck “city Z”. The story – its title meaning a misheard lyric or phrase from a song – examines the intersections of memory, language and identity.
***
Your Ad Could Go Here by Oksana Zabuzhko, translated by Halyna Hryn, Askold Melnyczuk, Nina Murray, Marco Carynnyk and Marta Horban
In this story collection, Zabuzhko unspools the inner worlds of women during war, revolution and the Soviet era. In the first story, Oh Sister, My Sister, the KGB raids the home of Natalia and her daughter, Darka, which leads to Natalia deciding to abort her second child to protect Darka (“she would not be able to shield the both of you”). Later, Darka hears a voice calling to her, sees visions of a “fair-haired head of fluffy curls lit up by sunshine”, and lies to her classmates that she has a little sister.
