Evropanka
$39.00
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A combination of deep rural wisdom, which is dying out, and images from Ukrainian history seen from below. Written by an author with both Ukrainian and Czech roots, the novel captures the fractured, shimmering and ambiguous image of a Ukrainian province, specifically the Polesie region, in the memoirs of an old woman. The novel's narrator, Maria, is the daughter of a Ukrainian peasant woman and a Czech prisoner of war. The family chronicle (composed of strong images and interconnected stories) not only treats the fate of the central family, but also a wide variety of other characters and figures that together make up the novel's colorful mosaic of life in the (mainly) Volyn region of Ukraine from the 1920s to the de facto present. The canvas of the narrative is at times tattered, burnt and therefore fragmentary, splintering into smaller stories of a more personal nature, into which the dramatic 'big' stories of Eastern Europe sometimes brutally intrude. Suggestive and at times very oppressive, the novel has the potential to sweep the reader away with its ferocity and immediacy.
