Voroshilovgrad
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"The power source for Zhadan's writing is in its linguistic passion."—Die Zeit
"One of the most important creative forces in modern Ukrainian alternative culture."—KulturSpiegel
A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother's gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the Soviet era name of the Ukranian city of Luhansk, mixing magical realism and exhilarating road novel in poetic, powerful, and expressive prose.
Serhiy Zhadan, one of the key figureheads in contemporary Ukrainian literature and the most famous poet in the country, has become the voice of Ukraine's "Euro-Maidan" movement. He lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A homecoming is by turns magical and brutal in Zhadan's impressive picaresque novel. Herman Korolyov, an aimless 33-year-old urbanite, is summoned back to the rural town in Eastern Ukraine where he and his brother, Yura, grew up, and where Yura has been running a successful gas station until his unexplained disappearance. At home, Herman finds Injured, an adroit ladies' man, and Kocha, the beloved town criminal, manning the station, despite intimidation from gangsters who want to buy the property. Together with Injured, Kocha, and his accountant, Olga, Herman attempts to save the business, and with each step becomes more enmeshed in the town's relationships and the landscape itself. He sees drug-induced, hallucinatory visions, goes drinking with the nutty aviation aficionado Ernst, plays soccer with old friends who may be phantoms, finds fellowship with the local (Christian) Shtundist sect, and has amorous adventures nearly everywhere. But Herman's occasionally absurdist, reliably funny world is also deeply violent: corn farmers war with the locals, and an anonymous, bloodstained businessman hints darkly at the future awaiting the region. For Zhadan, loyalty and fraternity are the life-giving forces in this exhausted, fertile, near-anarchic corner of the country, and though his expansive imagination and rich lyricism contrast unfortunately with his stereotypical female characters, readers will be touched by his devotion to a land of haunted beauty, "high sky," and "black earth."
