Petrichor

In Petrichor: The Scent of the Earth After Rain, Volodymyr Rafeyenko traces the intertwined fates of two Ukrainian families shaped by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Maria, Oleksandr, and their son Petro flee Donetsk after the 2014 invasion of Donbas, while Viktor and Liza attempt to escape their cottage community outside Kyiv when it is encircled during the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Blending realism with myth, memory, and dark humor, Rafeyenko peoples wartime Ukraine with figures both real and imagined: Ezra Pound and Hans Christian Andersen, figures from the Mahabharata, talking animals and haunted landscapes. As the characters navigate survival and displacement, cruelty and care, the novel asks what it means to coexist—with one another, with the dead, and with history itself.

Lyrical, unsettling, and deeply humane, Petrichor is a powerful meditation on war, loss, and the fragile persistence of life.