Date:
Location:
A literary event with Yuri Andrukhovych
In conversation with Mark Andryczyk (Harriman / Columbia) and Oleh Kotsyuba (HURI / Harvard)
IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online.
About the Event
Yuri Andrukhovych will read from recent publications of his writing in English translation, including from Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War (Penguin, 2023) and My Final Territory: Selected Essays (University of Toronto Press, reprinted 2023). He will also preview new translations of his poetry and prose from forthcoming publications and discuss Ukraine two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion in conversation with Mark Andryczyk and moderated by Oleh Kotsyuba.
On 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. Ukraine 22 is an anthology that brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war. [Source]
My Final Territory is a collection of Andrukhovych’s philosophical, autobiographical, political, and literary essays, demonstrating his enormous talent as an essayist to the English-speaking world. This volume broadens Andrukhovych’s international audience and will create a dialogue with anglophone readers throughout the world in a number of fields including philosophy, history, journalism, political science, sociology, and anthropology. In their introduction, Mark Andryczyk and Michael M. Naydan reveal a somewhat lesser-known side of Andrukhovych’s writings that places him alongside such writers as recent Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. Eleven of the fourteen essays in this volume, including his seminal work "Central-Eastern Revision" and a brand-new essay on the Russo-Ukrainian War, appear here for the first time in English. My Final Territory showcases Yuri Andrukhovych’s unique voice and provides insight into the Ukrainian experience of nationality and identity. [Source]
About the Writer
Yuri Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He studied at Ukrainian Printing Academy (1977 – 1982) and in the Moscow Literary Institute (1989 – 1991). In 1985, together with Viktor Neborak and Oleksandr Irvanets, he founded the popular literary performance group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesque-Bluster-Buffoonery). He has published five poetry books — Sky and Squares (1985), Downtown (1989), Exotic Birds and Plants (1991, new editions in 1997 and 2002), The Songs for A Dead Rooster (2004) and The Letters from Ukraine (2013). Andrukhovych's prose works, the novels Recreations (1992), Moscoviad (1993), Perverzion (1996), Twelve Circles (2003), Mystery (2007), Darlings of Justice (2018) and Radio Night (2021) have had a great impact on readers in Ukraine. He also writes literary essays, which have been collected in Disorientation in Locality (1999), The Devil Is in the Cheese (2006), Lexicon of Intimate Cities (2011) and Fantomas Was Buried Here (2015). Together with Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk, he published My Europe (2000 in Polish and 2001 in Ukrainian).
Yuri Andrukhovych’s books are translated and published in Poland, Germany, Canada, USA, Hungary, Finland, Belarus, Russia, Serbia, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, France, Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Northern Macedonia, Slovenia and other countries – all together into 22 languages. He is a laureate of six prestigious international literary awards: Herder Preis (Alfred Toepfer Stiftung, Hamburg, 2001), Erich-Maria Remarque Friedenspreis (Germany, Osnabrück, 2005), Leipziger Buchpreis zur EuropäischenVerständigung (Germany, 2006), Central-European Literary Award Angelus (Poland, Wroclaw, 2006), Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken (Germany, Bremen, 2014), Vilenica International Literary Prize (Slovenia, 2017), and Heinrich-Heine-Preis (Germany, 2022). [Source, Photo by Valentyn Kuzan]
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This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.
Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Megan Duncan Smith, HURI Programs Coordinator, at duncansmith@fas.harvard.edu at least two weeks in advance of the session.
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