Serpentine Books
Independent publisher of crime, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, romantic comedies and mash-ups.
View Rights PortalIndependent publisher of crime, thrillers, sci-fi, mysteries, romantic comedies and mash-ups.
View Rights PortalAbout E-planet E-planet Educational Services is an international organisation created by a dedicated and enthusiastic team of experts on education, marketing and development. Our goal is to provide our partners, students and customers with top-level services and products. That is why we have developed a unique, fully integrated company for ESL (English as a Second Language) educational services and business training. We combine traditional methods with cutting-edge technology to achieve a variety of purposes!
View Rights PortalThe book of the selected works by Serhiy Zhadan (23.08.1974), the most popular and beloved Ukrainian poet of the new wave, includes the most famous poems from all the previous collections, as well as new, not yet published poetry. This is the most complete selection by the poet to date.
And so they return from the war and notice that the war exists only in their reality. And that now they will have to bear responcibility for that war. The space between their responsibility and their war is filled with fierceness and anger, but also faith and perseverance. And only the one who remembers where it all started can overcome this chasm. And most importantly, he knows how everything should end."The Templars" is a collection of 39 poems about the war that no one declared, about the pain that no one can cope with, about the love that no one can refuse, and the hope on which everything rests.Serhiy ZhadanI was honored to illustrate Serhiy Zhadan's new book. In a sense, we all live in the Age of Desire. Serhiy today is perhaps the most important figure of the new Ukrainian literature. I also perceive him as a voice of reason and a role model of the honest position of a writer in our tattered time in our already self-reborn country. I decided not to literally illustrate specific texts, but to create a kind of suite based on my own works from different years, that resonate with Serhiy's poetry. Alexander Roitburd
Permanent Residency is an art book by two Kharkiv authors, poet Serhiy Zhadan and artist Pavlo Makov. It is an attempt to review the last 27 years of their presence in Kharkiv through the optics of their works. The book combines two views, two generations, and two different artistic languages . The publication contains graphic works and poems selected by Pavlo Makov and Serhiy Zhadan independently during the creation of the artbook. The works are organized in a reversed order. They do not comment on each other; poems do not describe graphic works, and graphic works do not illustrate poems. This allows a reader/viewer to become a third participant in the process of discovering common meanings.
Serhiy Zhadan's new book, "Vyshyvanyi. The King of Ukraine", is a story that is always relevant, especially nowadays. It is a story of love for Ukraine. Austrian Archduke Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen, known as Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, played a prominent role in the Ukrainian national liberation movement. Zhadan speaks about the project: "The figure of Vyshyvany is non-trivial, interesting, and deserves all kinds of mentions and study. The coming of Vyshivany to Ukrainianness and acceptance of his identity is not a fictional story. It is interesting to learn how many people are discovering Ukraine, Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, and the Ukrainian language." The book has already found its supporters and even received an award in the "Best Book Design 2020" competition, held by the "Book Arsenal" International Festival in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Ukraine. This award is fully justified: the creative tandem of Zhuk&Kelm artistic talent has created a real gem. Designer Nadiya Kelm wrote about the work: "Vyshyvany got his nickname from Ukrainian soldiers because he liked to dress up in embroidered clothes. This was the starting point for the visual concept of the book. We took a very geometric embroidery scheme, which grows with each section, revealing more and more of the portrait of the Vyshyvanyi. The perforated pages allude to the Ukrainian vytynanka (paper cut ornament)".
Brothers Anton and Tolik reunite at their family home to bury their recently deceased mother. An otherwise natural ritual unfolds under extraordinary circumstances: their house is on the front line of a war ignited by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Isolated without power or running water, the brothers’ best hope for success and survival lies in the declared cease-fire - the harvest truce. But such hopes are swiftly dashed, as it becomes apparent that the conflagration of war will not abate. Serhiy Zhadan’s A Harvest Truce stages a tragicomedy in which the commonplace experiences of death, birth, and the cycles of life marked by the practices of growing and harvesting food are rendered futile and farcical in the wake of the indifferent juggernaut of war.
Sixty poems about memory born of love, and about fire that leaves tenderness in its wake. Sixty attempts to outline light and to tell of the air above the city. Sixty excerpts of other people’s conversations, sixty voices that fill the twilight in spring. “The List of Ships” is a list of those who had left, but whom we cannot forget. A list of names that accompany you throughout all your life. A list of cities where you are always expected and welcomed. Perhaps, the most intimate book of the author.
...One day, you wake up and see the fire burning outside your window. You didn't start it. But you the one who will have to put it out......January 2015. Donbas. Pasha, a teacher at one of the schools, watches as the front line steadily approaches his home. It happens that he is forced to cross this line. To return later. And to return he needs to decide whose side his house is on...
"Antenna" is a collection of 80 new poems written by the author over the past two years. They represent 80 attempts to catch air vibrations, to catch the flow of invisible radio waves in space, to feel to the touch of the time in which we live, breathe, and speak. Time, every trace of which leaves a burn—a time when private diary entries could be war chronicles and Bible stories or the morning news. Sensual and deep.
The twentieth century was a time for the brightest and daring ways of expressing themselves in creativity. It was a time to experiment with form and content, and the historical revolution was reflected in the texts of writers and poets. How Ukrainian poets saw this time and how they felt will be clearly shown by the Anthology of Ukrainian Poetry of the Twentieth Century. From Tychyna to Zhadan. Thanks to this book, the reader will find the already known works by Dmytro Pavlychko, Vasyl‘ Stus, Lina Kostenko, and get acquainted with the work of those who became famous at the end of the century — Yuriy Izdryk, Oleksiy Zhupanskiy, Serhiy Zhadan, Galyna Kruk. You may also meet and come to love other talented names. Ivan Malkovych gathered everyone under one cover and became the compiler of this collection himself, a poet, publisher and owner of the publishing house "A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-ha".
Post-photographic research, which explores traces of a traumatic historical event in everyday practices and in contemporary landscape and tests the limits of photography as a medium in trauma representation. The starting point of this project was the personal sense of guilt which accompanies the acts of throwing food away. This feeling is common in contemporary Ukrainian culture and originates in our postmemory - it was imprinted into our generation’s behavioral patterns by the stories of our grandparents - survivors of the man-made famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine called the Holodomor, which killed millions. The ink prints document the thrown-away food while fragments of found black-and-white photographs of unrecognisable landscapes demonstrate the lack of the famine’s traces in the landscape – unlike many collective traumas which have exact geographic locations and present in the landscape in the form of ‘places of memory’.
»Schlimm ist es zu sehen, wie Geschichte entsteht.« Seit Sommer 2014 notiert Serhij Zhadan, was ihm auf seinen Reisen ins ostukrainische Kriegsgebiet widerfährt. Es sind lyrische Momentaufnahmen, die das Essentielle jäh aufscheinen lassen, Kürzestgeschichten über Menschen, die plötzlich auf zwei verfeindeten Seiten stehen oder nicht mehr wissen, wo sie hingehören und was aus ihnen werden soll. Wenige Strophen vermitteln etwas von der Tragödie Millionen Einzelner. In den lakonischen Versen ist die Bedeutung Brechts spürbar, dessen Lyrik Zhadan seit der ukrainischen Revolution übersetzt.
Es sollte ein weiterer Gedichtband werden, schreibt Serhij Zhadan, über die östliche Landschaft im Winter, den nahenden Schnee, die Stimmen in der Luft, die Weinberge, die Stadt am Horizont, die sich mit Lärm und Licht füllt. Doch am 24. Februar 2022, mit Beginn des großen Krieges, brach die Zeit, verstummte die Poesie. Erst Monate später kehrte die Sprache zurück: »Zeit neue Gedichte zu schreiben / Bei den alten weint niemand mehr.« 50 + 1 untertitelt Zhadan seinen neuen Lyrikband, der das Davor und Danach und den Riss in der Mitte dokumentiert – datierte Gedichte, zwischen Ende 2021 und Sommer 2023 geschrieben.
The book by Ivan and Marta Dzyuba consists of texts (memoir essays, articles and interviews) that comment on the life and work of Serhiy Paradzhanov, one of the most outstanding and original artists of Ukraine and the world. His image is made up of myths and mythologemes, mostly created by Paradzhanov himself. The authors of the book expand this image by supplementing it with details of everyday life, visualisations and conceptual interpretations of the filmmakers’ actions, in both everyday and artistic life. This book also gives the reader an idea of how Parajanov's artistic universe was formed, how he transitioned from a film director who worked with the myths of communist ideology to an artist who spoke the language of national mythologies in avant-garde and surprisingly modern way.
Serhiy Osoka’s first prose collection is about real-life stories and images of those who survived a hunger strike in their childhood or youth and experience other misfortunes in old age: illnesses, impotence, obduracy, hopelessness, misunderstanding, alienation. The author masterfully puts them in relationships with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren - still inexperienced and sometimes arrogant. These connections sealed by invisible, inconspicuous love deeply touch the reader, returning him to his own experience. Graphic realism and a thin line of mysticism, the unconscious desire for love and the awareness of love temptations transience, the beauty of youth and foulness of old age, the torments of realization and bitterness of disappointments - everything harmonizes in the repetition of words on the strong thread of the idea.
The story Crazy is a new work by the famous contemporary Ukrainian author Serhiy Grydin, master of psychological prose for youth. This is the story of a 16-year-old boy who lives in a computer world and cannot imagine his life without gadgets. He feels like a completely happy person until he meets his first love, which not only gives him pleasant moments, but also brings the first serious trials of physical strength, morality and dignity, ingenuity and resourcefulness. This is where Artem will need all his till up to now acquired skills. But, as it turns out, sometimes not only the victory itself is important, but the experience gained by a person, and true friends.
Each novel by Serhiy Osoka is a small-big story of an ordinary man who would probably stay unnoticed on this Earth if not for the attentive master of words. Because he does not simply write but creates a three-dimensional picture of human life with a few strokes, it seems you can hear how reeds rustle, fish splash in the pond, apples fall, old doors creak, and how man sighing, muffled laughter, and sobs mix with the wind. And you can also feel the smells - sometimes thick and dense to dizziness, at times volatile and transparent, like a floral scent. Somewhere in this 3D format, you see a man with all his beautiful and ugly features, rough surfaces, and deep recesses of his troubled soul. The plots of these novels may seem minor or secondary, but they are only the key to the portal that leads you to the world of great literature.
Zhadans Helden kämpfen gegen die Verfinsterung ihres Lebens in der Ukraine. Sie sind Rebellen der Existenz. Und vor dem Hintergrund des Krieges ringen sie um ihre Liebe, um ein mutiges, freies Verhältnis zueinander und um die eine Geschichte, die irgendwann alle über dieses Chaos erzählen werden. Mesopotamien ist das Meisterwerk von Serhij Zhadan, eine leidenschaftliche Liebeserklärung an seine Heimat. »Zhadan hat ein so wehmütiges, gut gelauntes und kämpferisches Buch geschrieben, wie es lange keins mehr gab. Ein lebendiges Denkmal für die ideale Stadt Charkiw, die bedrohte Stadt, das bedrohte Land. Dabei ist er nicht einen Moment kitschig oder folkloristisch, dafür sind seine Figuren viel zu besoffen, naiv, selbstverliebt und mitunter auch brutal.« Volker Weidermann, Der Spiegel
Borys Khersonskyi is a famous poet, essayist, and translator, laureate of many international awards. Bow to a Tree is a collection of the author’s poems in Ukrainian, his auto-translations, and verses translated by Serhiy Zhadan, Volodymyr Tymchuk, and Oleh Honcharenko. The author travels through his poems from the most ancient times to the birth of Christ, the starting point of the hope revival through redemption. From the Soviet regime, he lived under to the present - a time full of pain, loss, war, and all the same faith and hope.
»Vergiß die Politik, lies keine Zeitung, geh nicht ins Netz, verweigere deine Stimme« – so beginnt der »Linke Marsch«, ein Kapitel aus Serhij Zhadans zweitem Prosaband, dem ein Song der Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UKR, als Motto dient. Zhadan ist dabei, sich zur stärksten Stimme der jungen ukrainischen Literatur zu entwickeln – und zum Antipoden von Juri Andruchowytsch. Auch Zhadans Ich-Erzähler ist ständig im Zug oder in bizarren Landschaften unterwegs. Doch es zieht ihn nicht zu den Ruinen der habsburgischen Vergangenheit, sondern in die Industriebrachen des Donbass im Südosten des Landes – an die Orte des von den Sowjets zerschlagenen Anarchokommunismus. Niemand scheint sich an Nestor Machno zu erinnern. Anarchismus, das gab es nie. Bis er im November 2004 in Charkiw, zu Füßen des »Fuck-Lenin-Denkmals«, wiederaufersteht.
Für ein Tagebuch fehlt ihm die Zeit. Serhij Zhadan ist Tag und Nacht im beschossenen Charkiw (Ost-Ukraine) unterwegs – er evakuiert Kinder und alte Leute aus den Vororten, verteilt Lebensmittel, koordiniert Lieferungen an das Militär und gibt Konzerte. Die Posts in den sozialen Netzwerken dokumentieren seine Wege durch die Stadt und sprechen den Charkiwern Mut zu, unermüdlich, Tag für Tag. Die Stadt leert sich. Freunde kommen um. Der Tod ist allgegenwärtig, der Hass wächst. Als die Bilder von Butscha um die Welt gehen, versagt auch Zhadan die Stimme. »Es gibt keine Worte. Einfach keine. Haltet durch, Freunde. Jetzt gibt es nur noch Widerstand, Kampf und gegenseitige Unterstützung.« Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg: Das Buch ist eine Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse aus der Ukraine, das Zeugnis eines Menschen in der Ukraine, der während des Schreibens in eine neue Realität eintritt und sich der Vernichtung von allem entgegenstemmt. Kein einsamer Beobachter, sondern ein aktiver Zivilist in einer Gesellschaft, die in den letzten acht Jahren gelernt hat, was es bedeutet, gemeinsam stark zu sein. 2022 wird Serhij Zhadan zum Träger des Friedenspreises des Deutschen Buchhandels gewählt. In der Begründung heißt es: »Wir ehren den ukrainischen Schriftsteller und Musiker für sein herausragendes künstlerisches Werk sowie für seine humanitäre Haltung, mit der er sich den Menschen im Krieg zuwendet und ihnen unter Einsatz seines Lebens hilft. In seinen Romanen, Essays, Gedichten und Songtexten führt uns Serhij Zhadan in eine Welt, die große Umbrüche erfahren hat und zugleich von der Tradition lebt. Seine Texte erzählen, wie Krieg und Zerstörung in diese Welt einziehen und die Menschen erschüttern. Dabei findet der Schriftsteller eine eigene Sprache, die uns eindringlich und differenziert vor Augen führt, was viele lange nicht sehen wollten. Nachdenklich und zuhörend, in poetischem und radikalem Ton erkundet Serhij Zhadan, wie die Menschen in der Ukraine trotz aller Gewalt versuchen, ein unabhängiges, von Frieden und Freiheit bestimmtes Leben zu führen.«