BASEES Annual Conference 2022

Ukrainian-Russian War and Storytelling

Sat9 Apr04:20pm(20 mins)
Where:
Garden Room
Presenter:

Discussion

Russian invasion in 2014 caused an outburst of Ukrainian so-called war literature – novels, sketches, short stories, essays, diaries, memoirs. Ninety-five percents of these books were written by soldiers, veterans, volunteers, witnesses. In 2019 more than 200 books on Ukrainian-Russian war were published. Now that number is much bigger. As translating took time, numerous works haven’t been translated into English yet. Here is a short list of books that were translated in English.

The Airport by Serhii Loiko (2015), an expert was translated into English in The Odessa Review (http://odessareview.com/excerpt-sergei-loikos-airport/)

Apricots of Donbas by Liuba Yakymchyk (2015)

Ukrainian Diaries: Dispatches from the Kyiv by Andrii Kurkov (2015)

Words from War: New Poems from Ukraine edited by Oksana Maksymchyk and Max Rosochinsky (2017)
The Orphanage by Serhii Zhadan (2017)
Absolute Zero by Artem Chekh (2017)
Grey Beez by Andrii Kurkov (2018)
In Isolation by Stanislav Aseev (2018)
Daughter by Tamara Horikha-Zernia (2019, forthcoming in English)

In Russia, books about contemporary Ukrainian-Russian started appearing since 2009: Maksim Kalashnikov “Independent Ukraine. Collapse of the project” (2009), Fedor Berezin “War 2010. Ukrainian Front” (2009), Georgiy Savitskiy “The battlefield is Ukraine. Broken Trident” (2009), Fedor Berezin “War 2011” (Moscow, 2010).

These books described full-scale military invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine that is supposed to happen in 2010-2011. Mentioned novels are affordable, easy assessable, they consist numerous narratives that Russian propaganda machine is using now. After invasion in 2014, Russian media started spreading a word that great Russian writers predicted war in Ukraine.

Mentioned novels have poor artistic qualities. Nevertheless, Russian medias highlight that such literature is up-to-date, express high truth on the contrary to more sophisticated works.

Analyzing these works, we might observe that except real war actions, war of narratives have been happening in contemporary Ukrainian literature for many years.

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