About the Book
Oksana Zabuzhko, author of “the most influential Ukrainian book in the fifteen years since independence,” Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex, returns with a gripping short story collection.
Oksana Zabuzhko, Ukraine’s leading public intellectual, is called upon to make sense of the unthinkable reality of our times. In this breathtaking short story collection, she turns the concept of truth over in her hands like a beautifully crafted pair of gloves. From the triumph of the Orange Revolution, which marked the start of the twenty-first century, to domestic victories in matchmaking, sibling rivalry, and even tennis, Zabuzhko manages to shock the reader by juxtaposing things as they are—inarguable, visible to the naked eye—with how things could be, weaving myth and fairy tale into pivotal moments just as we weave a satisfying narrative arc into our own personal mythologies.
At once intimate and worldly, these stories resonate with Zabuzhko’s irreverent and prescient voice, echoing long after reading.
About the Author :
Oksana Zabuzhko is one of Ukraine’s most celebrated contemporary writers and the author of more than twenty books. She graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Kiev’s Shevchenko University and obtained her PhD in philosophy of arts. Since publishing her influential novel Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (1996, published in 2011 in English translation by Halyna Hryn), she has been working as a freelance author.
Zabuzhko lives in Kiev, where she and her partner, artist Rostyslav Luzhetskyy, operate a small publishing house.
Zabuzhko’s books have been translated into fifteen languages. Among her numerous acknowledgments are a MacArthur Grant (2002), the Antonovych International Foundation Prize (2008), the Order of Princess Olga (2009), and the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine (2019). Her magnum opus, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2010, published in 2012 in English translation by Nina Murray), won the Angelus Central European Literary Prize (2013) for the best novel of Eastern and Central Europe.
Review :
“Themes of fear, desire, and national camaraderie flow through Ukrainian author and philosopher Zabuzhko’s (The Museum of Abandoned Secrets, 2012, etc.) eight fiery tales. Zabuzhko has been recognized internationally for her irreverent voice and, even within the first few pages of this collection, one can see why…Evocative stories about the way national issues impact even the most personal aspects of life.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Objective truth and personal mythologies collide in Zabuzhko’s short story collection, which centers on the question of just what truth is in this contemporary moment. She takes readers on a journey from the triumph of the Orange Revolution to domestic victories in matchmaking and sibling rivalry, challenging us to think about how things could be by incorporating elements of myth and fairytale in these breathtaking stories.” —PEN America
“Oksana Zabuzhko makes her triumphant return to U.S. publishing with [this] passionate short story collection.” —Women Writers, Women’s Books
“At once intimate and worldly, these stories resonate with Zabuzhko’s irreverent and prescient voice, echoing long after reading.” —Midwest Book Review
“In a collection that coheres pivotal ideas about womanhood and history with impeccable craft, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko has once again impressed her brilliance upon the English-speaking world with the newly released Your Ad Could Go Here…Known equally for her adeptness in criticism and philosophy as her accomplishments in poetry and fiction, Zabuzhko’s refined perspective on Ukrainian identity and feminism, enlivening her characters and narratives, is a gift for readers everywhere…Zabuzhko’s protagonists—invariably women—turn their attention inward, without losing sight of their physical selves. They find strength, power, faults—and a wellspring of self-love, despite being riven by the natural contradictions of a full life…The eight stories that make up the book are by turns realistic, surreal, and supernatural, and they conspire to place the collection right at the border where our world gives way to magic. Here, Zabuzhko continues the interrogation of gender and Ukrainian identity that has characterized her decades of writing and scholarship…Whitewater sentences cascade around banks of commas and drop the reader into new altitudes. Tossed-out asides contain a depth of experience and reveal Zabuzhko’s dedication to her theme…The women of these stories observe their own actions and feelings amid both internationally significant events (the 2004 Orange Revolution) and more quotidian turning points (a daughter’s teenage years). But their preoccupation is both intellectual and physical: Zabuzhko’s characters are unapologetically embodied. Their complicated and evolving relationships with physicality are treated with respect, as an integral component of selfhood, whether they’re embracing their own sexuality or confronting a loss of beauty. Taken together, these stories push for a way forward for Ukrainian women and celebrate the country’s activists…Zabuzhko’s stories, and their expert translations, help do that job, as they knit together Ukraine’s past and hoped-for future. Despite the subtle and overt activism at work, Zabuzhko keeps looking back: she articulates the importance of Ukraine’s democratic heritage…It’s impossible not to read this as Zabuzhko’s own mission statement, given how well she succeeds in this collection.” —Asymptote Journal
“Her new collection of stories Your Ad Could Go Here…reveals Zabuzhko to be a versatile writer of short prose…the translators expertly follow the disorientating, but thrilling, twists of Zabuzhko’s long, compound sentences and sudden shifts in tone…whether in poetry, prose or essays, her central concern has always been the impact of destructive, collective history on the delicate fate of the individual, and she is especially interested in how ideologies, repression and violence imprint themselves on the female body, even across generations. The revelation of traumatic past experience recurs throughout these stories…Elsewhere in the collection, Zabuzhko’s style becomes more essayistic, giving the reader a taste of the sharp cultural and political commentary for which she is known in Ukraine.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK)
“Rich, lyrical descriptions lasso the reader into the lives of the characters and into the historical dramas of the past and present…We get a deep sense of the camaraderie that takes hold of strangers during uprisings, and of the way one comes to crave that feeling…This concern with the connection between characters in moments of high drama and intimate passion makes Zabuzhko’s prose, which is always anchored in Ukrainian reality, universally relevant.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
