New Homeland Vorošylovhrad? The Žadan’s Poetical Eastern Ukraine

Abstract

The latest novel, Vorošylovhrad, by Ukrainian writer Serhij Žadan takes the reader to an East-Ukrainian post-totalitarian landscape and reveals a special Žadan-like geo-poetic (e.g. in comparison with the Galizian geo-poetic of Jurij Andruxovyč). Unlike his previous novel, Depeche Mode, it is not only a story about the hero’s journey through a devastated post-Soviet landscape, i.e. a metaphorical reflection of the search for one’s own past, but as well a story about finding a way to remember this past. The ability to remember the past offers a way out of the state of transcendental and real homelessness (the story ends with a budding love-story, a novum in Žadan’s prose).