All titles - Books from Ukraine
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    • Biography: religious & spiritual
      2019

      Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and the "positive-sum" principle

      by Myroslav Marynovych

      The book contains a thorough analysis of the preaching heritage of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky from the point of view of its compliance (or non-compliance) with the methodological principle, which is now called "positive-sum" or "win-win". The Metropolitan derived the genesis of this way of thinking from theology, and the author finds examples of its application by the Metropolitan himself in the messages of Andrei Sheptytsky in the field of economic relations, national relations, state building, inter-confessional and inter-religious relations. The author supplemented this scientific research with his own vision of what role the positive-sum principle and the formula of Metropolitan Andrey can play in the near future of Ukraine and the world.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      2012

      Mirrors of Identity. Studies in the History of Concepts and Ideas in Ukraine (16th through the Early 18th Century)

      by Natalia Yakovenko

      A book by a prominent Ukrainian historian, professor of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Natalia Yakovenko includes selected articles on identity formation, worldview, the concept of “correct” power and duty of the nobility in early modern Ukraine

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      2015

      More or Less

      by Oleksandr Boichenko

      The role of the intellectual in Ukraine and the world, the sense of irony, the Nazi and communist totalitarian regimes depicted by Tadeusz Borowski and Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski. Taras Shevchenko depicted through the eyes of Hryhoriy Hrabovych. Ivan Franko depicted through the eyes of Yaroslav Hrytsak. Lesya Ukrainka depicted through the eyes of Oksana Zabuzhko. Yuri Andruhovych depicted through the eyes of Karl-Josef Zumbrunnen. The Maidan and post-revolutionary confusion, reconciliation with Poland and the war with Russia, Crimea and Donbas. This is an incomplete list of topics covered more or less in this collection of essays.

    • Literature: history & criticism
      2007

      Notre Dame d’Ukraine: Lesya Ukrainka in the Conflict of Mythologies

      by Oksana Zabuzhko

      One of Oksana Zabuzhko's most famous books, first published in 2007 and awarded many prestigious prizes, offers the reader an impressive intellectual journey through the ages, cultures and religions in search of "Ukraine we have lost." The key to it is the myth of Lesya Ukrainka - the least read and most dramatically underestimated writer from the pantheon of our national classics. This is not only a fundamental historical and cultural work but also an exquisite philological exegesis. It is also a warning book about the Ukrainian present - about how dearly a nation pays for the loss and oblivion of centuries-old culture.

    • Biography & True Stories
      2017

      Open My Lips, O Lord

      by Yosyf Zisels, Izabella Khruslinska

      In conversations with the famous Polish journalist Iza Khruslinska, Yosyf Zisels talks about his life path, the struggle for human rights in the USSR, the restoration of Jewish communities in independent Ukraine, Ukrainian-Jewish relations, problems of recent history and modern politics.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      October 2021

      Outcasts: Punished by Space

      by Tamara Vronska, Olena Stiazhkina

      Minusnyky (outcasts) are a verbal and social creation of the Soviet state, which, through repression, discrimination and control, created communities of "friends" and "foes", branding the latter with punitive methods and forming a specific language to denote them. The book talks about a special category of citizens of the "Soviet country" who were recognized as "socially dangerous" and punished by a ban on settling in a number of areas of the USSR after forced "removal" from their places of permanent residence, as well as serving time in the Gulag system. The researchers analyze the process of constructing the Bolshevik concept of the geographical isolation of the "disloyal" and determine the logic of creating the Soviet space as a space of prohibitions. The regularity of the Soviet territories is analyzed not only as a manifestation of Stalin's repressive policy but also as an organic part of the functioning of the totalitarian mechanism which picked up momentum when the Bolsheviks seized power.

    • Biography: general
      2020

      Outstanding Women in Ukrainian History. Biographical sketches in historical settings. Book One. 10-18 centuries

      by Serhii Seheda

      In his book, a famous Ukrainian anthropologist Professor Serhii Segeda, tells about famous Ukrainian women who left their mark on the country's history. From the legendary Princess Olha to Natalia Rozumovska, the mother of the last Ukrainian Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky, these women lived lives full of struggle, setbacks and breakthroughs, and had a significant influence on political decisions and statesmen. Their amazing stories will fascinate even the most seasoned readers. For a wide range of readers, history buffs, university students and history teachers.

    • True stories
      2020

      Patty Pan Compote

      by Olha Kari

      "Patty Pan Compote" is a series of reportage sketches and essays describing how a whole generation of Ukrainians lived amidst the chaos of declining Soviet Union. This book is about what it was like to live in the 90's, when "pineapple" compote was cooked from the patty pat and eggplant became the substitute for mushrooms, when everyone was gripped by a total knitting obsession due to the lack of clothes. People grew accustomed to stockpiling absolutely everything, and the first sanitary pads have just begun to change the lives of Ukrainian women. Based on her own recollections, the author tells how the punitive gastronomy of that time worked, how the pseudo-brotherly relations with other Soviet republics often manifested themselves and how Abkhazia hosted Ukrainian schoolchildren a few months before the war between Georgia and Abkhazia.

    • Biography: general
      2020

      Paul Celan. References

      by Petro Rykhlo

      The book contains articles and essays describing the life of the outstanding German-speaking poet of the 20th century, a native of Chernivtsi, Paul Celan. The book explores his Bukovinian roots (Bukovyna is a historical region located both in Ukraine and Romania), little-known pages of his biography, connections with the Slavic and Jewish groups, personal and creative contacts with such authors as Alfred Margul-Sperber, Ingeborg Bachmann, Bertolt Brecht. The reader will also take a note on the role and significance of music in Celan’s works. The book is published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth and 50th anniversary of his death. The publication is intended for literary critics, philosophers, cultural experts and anyone interested in the history of development of the 20th century German lyrics.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      2018

      Philosophy of Freedom

      by Myroslav Popovych

      The book "Philosophy of Freedom" by Myroslav Popovych is part of the "Great Scientific Project" series, which collects the works of various authors. Myroslav Volodymyrovych was a great Ukrainian philosopher and thinker, an outstanding personality, and for many years he headed the Institute of Philosophy named after G. Skovoroda. In different years, he wrote articles and essays that were published in various journals in Ukraine and abroad. "Philosophy of Freedom" is a collection of essays and thoughts, which he himself systematised during the last months of his life. The author witnessed many historical events, and remembering them, he sought to understand why everything happened this way and not the other, whether anything could have been changed, whether the past of the Ukrainian people had an influence on them. Popovych searched for the truth, because it was the most important goal for him, and now posterity can find out what conclusions he reached. The topics of his interest vary, but mostly he researched theories and objects, and analysed historical events.

    • Literature: history & criticism
      2020

      Rebels: New woman and modern nation

      by Vira Aheieva, Iryna Borysiuk, Oksana Pashko, Olena Peleshenko, Olga Poliukhovych, Oksana Schur

      This book is about true rebels: late 19th and early 20th century Ukrainian female writers. They find their own voices in literature and start to defend theis own space, both private and public. 12 stories of life and work of Marko Vovchok, Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska, Iryna Vilde, Sophia Yablonska and others.

    • Literature & Literary Studies
      October 2018

      Selected Poetry

      by Vasyl Stus

      Vasyl Stus was not only a poet of rare talent, publicist, translator and literary critic, but he is also a personification of "the voice of conscience in the world of shaky and blurred concepts of honour, truth, decency." He spent nearly half of his life in Soviet detention centres, solitary confinement cells, Mordovian and Kolyma camps and toiling at mines. The Soviet penal system deprived him of family visits, seized his poems, letters and manuscripts, physically abused him and tried to destroy him morally but it never managed to break his spirit.The poems in this collection are the best examples of Vasyl Stus's lyrics. In these lines, civic motives and the artist's pain for the fate of Ukraine are intertwined with a delicate lace of love lyrics and philosophical reflections on life and the purpose of man. Poems are full of hope and unyielding resolve.

    • Biography & True Stories
      July 2021

      Serhii Lyfar. The biography

      Flying under the wing of Icarus

      by Roman Bereza

      The novel depicts the life and work of the legendary Ukrainian dancer and choreographer Serhii Lyfar who, due to his talent, entered the cohort of the most outstanding artists of the world culture of the 20th century. Relying on documentary sources and biographical data, the author vividly and truthfully describes the entire era of the development of choreographic art in Europe, which is associated with the name of the great Ukrainian, who was destined to appear at the origins of the latest revival of French ballet in the last century. The reader can watch Kyiv in the first quarter and middle of the 20th century. In the novel also appears the theatrical, choreographic, and artistic life of France of that time, which was vividly reflected in the creative path of Serhiy Lyfar and received its dynamic development in unity with such notable figures as Serhiy Diaghilev, Mykhailo Fokin, Enrico Cecchetti, Matilda Kshesinska, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spesyvtseva, Tamara Karsavina, Vaclav and Bronislava Nijinsky, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Benoit, Coco Chanel, George Balanchine and a number of other famous personalities who were in the center of world culture and art.

    • Biography: general
      2021

      Serhiy Paradzhanov. Bigger than a Legend

      by Dziuba Ivan, Dziuba Marta

      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.

    • Biography: general
      2020

      Shevchenko. Modern biography

      by Stanislav Rosovetskyi

      When reading this book, Taras Shevchenko's admirers will sincerely empathise with the poet, make unexpected biographical discoveries and enjoy his art and his quirky sense of humour. Non-fans, whose dislike for the Ukrainian genius stems from the Soviet rendering which still dominates the school curricula, have a chance to see a different Shevchenko. The book shows the great poet in situations that destroy his stereotypical image that was cultivated over the years. Last but not least, a thoughtful reader will be able to see that Russia in the times of Nikolas I is not too different from today's Russia and that the challenges Ukrainians faced in the mid-19th century repeat in the 21st century.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      2017

      Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag

      by Oksana Kis

      Of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women were sentenced to the Gulag in the 1940s and 1950s, only half survived. In Survival as Victory, Oksana Kis has produced the first anthropological study of daily life in the Soviet forced labor camps as experienced by Ukrainian women prisoners. Based on the written memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories of over 150 survivors, this book fills a lacuna in the scholarship regarding Ukrainian experience. Kis details the women’s resistance to the brutality of camp conditions not only through the preservation of customs and traditions from everyday home life, but also through the frequent elision of regional and confessional differences. Following the groundbreaking work of Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History (2003), this book is a must-read for anyone interested in gendered strategies of survival, accommodation, and resistance to the dehumanizing effects of the Gulag.

    • Short stories
      2021

      Sweets for the Medor

      by Andriy Bondar

      Sweets for the Medor is a collection of essays by Andriy Bondar written between 2017 and 2020. Essay writing here is a way to explore and rethink the world through one’s system of values and experience. Honesty here is intertwined with intellectual reflection. Deeper meanings and sometimes unexpected conclusions hide behind the form of short prose. Voids can be filled, and the definition of "falling from the height of one's own body" can refer not only to bodily injury, but also to a moral fall, which always occurs from the height of one's own ethical structures, and losses can later turn into gains, you just need to look at them from a different angle.

    • Biography: general
      2018

      TEURA. SOPHIA YABLONSKA

      by Oksana Zabuzhko, foreword

      "TEURA. SOFIA YABLONSKA" is a project that presents an outstanding Ukrainian female photographer, writer, traveler, and film documentarian Sophia Yablonska. It combines a photo album and 3 books of traveling prose from the literary heritage of Sofia Yablonska (1907-1971) Sophia was called "Theura" - a red bird - and thus recognized as female native of the island of Bora Bora, where she was one of the first to appear with a photo and film camera. In Indochina, Egypt, Ceylon, Bali, Tahiti, New Zealand - everywhere in the world, she filmed a "live" picture of life, and not fashionable productions at that time. The photo album, which was printed in Ukrainian and French (separate versions) with the support of the UKRAINIAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION, includes her photos from a trip around the world in the 1930s. Foreword - Oksana Zabuzhko (Kyiv) Photos from the archive of Natalie Udin, Yablonska's granddaughter (Paris) Biography: Veronika Khomenyuk and Andrii Benytskyi (Lviv) Photo captions: Natalka Beshta (Bangkok) Selection of illustrations and design (almost curators): Maria Norazyan and Ilya Pavlov, Grafprom studio (Kharkiv) Project manager: Lidia Likhach"

    • Literature: history & criticism
      2021

      Taras Shevchenko. New Perspectives

      by Volodymyr Dibrova

      Each chapter is a careful and unhurried reading of one of Shevchenko's famous works with a profound and witty commentary by Volodymyr Dibrova. The author is a translator, literary critic, and lecturer at Harvard University and teaches Ukrainian language and literature to students from all over the world. In this collection of essays, avoiding simplification and total idealization, he "translates" some realities, contexts and reflects on the sources of the writer's poetic influence. This book is aimed at allowing you to look at the famous texts "with a fresh eye", and after rereading them, to find your own Shevchenko and to better understand yourself as Ukrainians. Interesting, fascinating, and dynamic essays about literary texts and their influence on culture and society.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      2021

      Taste of the Soviet Union: Food and Eaters in the Art of Life and the Art of Cinema (mid-1960s - mid-1980s)

      by Olena Stiazhkina

      This book is about Soviet people - women, men, children - who ate at home, at work, on the road, in kindergartens and schools, in the system of the Soviet canteens. It describes those who fought for their food in long queues to the empty shops, at collective farm markets, gathered it in their own gardens, obtained it through bribes and barter exchanges and stole it at workplaces. It is about those who created the food surpluses in the system of the shadow economy and about those who refused food as a way of rebellion against the system and about those who managed to preserve national cuisine despite its deliberate extermination by the Bolsheviks and calling national dishes "simple nationalism." Food culture is considered not only as a sign of the late Soviet consumer revolution, but also as one of the powerful mechanisms of social engineering and (self) coercion. The real world of Soviet eaters is analysed together with the artistic world where filmmakers created and broadcasted the images of Soviet food, as an object representing repressive society in which taste was as problematic and almost unattainable as food and freedom associated with taste and choice.

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