Published in 2020 (first published 2014)
252 pages
Oksana Zabuzhko is a contemporary Ukrainian writer, poet and essayist.
Born in Lutsk, Ukraine, Zabuzhko studied philosophy at the Kiev University, where she also obtained her doctorate in aesthetics in 1987. In 1992 she taught at Penn State University as a visiting writer. Zabuzhko won a Fulbright scholarship in 1994 and taught Ukrainian literature at Harvard and University of Pittsburgh. Currently Zabuzhko works at the Hryhori Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Zabuzhko is known both for her literary works and criticism. Her controversial bestselling novel Field Work in Ukrainian Sex was translated in eight languages. In her writing Zabuzhko draws a lot of attention to the questions of Ukrainian self-identification, post-colonial issues and feminism. Her book Let My People Go won the Korrespondent magazine Best Ukrainian documentary book award in June 2006, and her book, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets, won Best Ukrainian Book 2010.
What is this book about?
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.
