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An introduction to an original poetic voice from eastern Ukraine
with deep roots in the unique cultural landscape of post-Soviet
devastation "Everyone can find something, if they only look
carefully," reads one of the memorable lines from this first
collection of poems in English by the world-renowned Ukrainian
author Serhiy Zhadan. These robust and accessible narrative poems
feature gutsy portraits of life on wartorn and poverty-ravaged
streets, where children tally the number of local deaths, where
mothers live with low expectations, and where romance lives like a
remote memory. In the tradition of Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski, and
William S. Burroughs, Zhadan creates a new poetics of loss, a daily
crusade of testimonial, a final witness of abandoned lives in a
claustrophobic universe where "every year there's less and less
air." Yet despite the grimness of these portraits, Zhadan's poems
are familiar and enchanting, lit by the magic of everyday detail,
leaving readers with a sense of hope, knowing that the will of a
people "will never let it be / like it was before."
A searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy
injustice, from iconic writer-activist Serhiy Zhadan  Since
the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian poet Serhiy
Zhadan has brought international attention to his country’s
struggle through his unflinching poetry of witness. In this searing
testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice, Zhadan
honors the memory of the lost and addresses the living, inviting us
to consider what language can offer to a country threatened with
extinction. Young lovers, marginalized outsiders, and ordinary
citizens pulse with life in a composite portrait of a people newly
unified by extremity. Even in the midst of enemy fire, Zhadan’s
lyrical monuments beat with a subterranean thrum of hope. Â
With a foreword by the poet Ilya Kaminsky, this selection of
Zhadan’s poetry, forged entirely in wartime, is an homage to the
Ukrainian people, a forceful reckoning with the violence of the
past and present, and an act of artistic imagination that breaks
with trauma and charts a new future for Ukraine.
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Mesopotamia (Paperback)
Serhiy Zhadan; Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes, Wanda Phipps, Virlana Tkacz, Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
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A unique work of fiction from the troubled streets of Ukraine, giving invaluable testimony to the new history unfolding in the nation’s post-independence years
This captivating book is Serhiy Zhadan’s ode to Kharkiv, the traditionally Russian-speaking city in Eastern Ukraine where he makes his home. A leader among Ukrainian post†‘independence authors, Zhadan employs both prose and poetry to address the disillusionment, complications, and complexities that have marked Ukrainian life in the decades following the Soviet Union’s collapse. His novel provides an extraordinary depiction of the lives of working-class Ukrainians struggling against an implacable fate: the road forward seems blocked at every turn by demagogic forces and remnants of the Russian past. Zhadan’s nine interconnected stories and accompanying poems are set in a city both representative and unusual, and his characters are simultaneously familiar and strange. Following a kind of magical-realist logic, his stories expose the grit and burden of stalled lives, the universal desire for intimacy, and a wistful realization of the off-kilter and even perverse nature of love.
Near the radiant blue waters of Lake Baikal, in the lands where
Mongolia, Siberia, and China meet, live the Buryats, an indigenous
people little known to the Western world. After seventy years of
religious persecution by the Soviet government, they can now pursue
their traditional spiritual practices, a unique blend of Tibetan
Buddhism and shamanism. There are two distinct shamanic paths in
the Buryat tradition: Black shamanism, which draws power from the
earth, and White shamanism, which draws power from the sky. In the
Buryat Aga region, Black and White shamans conduct rituals
together, for the Buryats believe that they are the children of the
Swan Mother, descendants of heaven who can unite both sides in
harmony. Providing an intimate account of one of the Buryats' most
important shamanic rituals, this book documents a complete Shanar,
the ceremony in which a new shaman first contacts his ancestral
spirits and receives his power.
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