Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures

SLA358, Breaking Away from Empire:
Ukrainian Fiction Since Independence
Spring 2025

Class meets on Wednesdays 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. Alumni Hall 304

Required textbooks

The following books are required reading in this course.You may purchase them at the U of T Bookstore or on-line (you are welcome to purchase electronic editions (EPUB or PDF, which are less expensive, but if you do, please bring them to class on your computers):

• Yuri Andrukhovych. Twelve Circles. Tr. Vitaly Chernetsky. Brooklyn, NY: Spuyten Duyvil, 2015. Amazon
• Oksana Zabuzhko. Field Work in Ukrainian Sex. Amazon
• Tanja Maljartschuk. A Biography of a Chance Miracle. Tr. Zenia Tompkins. Cadmus, 2018. Укр
• Tanja Maljartschuk. Forgottenness. Tr. Zenia Tompkins. Liveright, 1923
• Maria Matios. Hardly Ever Otherwise. Tr. Yury Tkacz. London: Glagoslav, 2012. Amazon or Publisher
• The White Chalk of Days Comp. & Ed. Mark Andryczyk. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017. Amazon.com. Online
• Serhiy Zhadan. Voroshilovhrad. Tr. Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2016. Amazon
• Andriy Lyubka. Carbide. Tr. Isaac Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes. Jantar Publishing, 2020. Publisher's online sales
• Andrey Kurkov. Grey Bees. Tr. Boris Dralyuk. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum, 2018.

The following items are also required reading, and are available for free on-line:

• Sofia Andrukhovych, “Forevatogetha”. Tr. Mark Andryczyk. from Herstories: An Anthology of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers. Ed. Michael Naydan.
• Oles Ulianenko. Stalinka. Translated by Olha Rudakevych. (Part 1) and (Part 2) Ukr
• Taras Prokhasko. The UnSimple. Translated by Uilleam Blacker. (Part 1) and (Part 2) Ukr або тут
• Valerii Shevchuk. Eye of the Abyss. Translated by Olha Rudakevych. (Part 1) and (Part 2). Ukr

Secondary reading (and possible topics for presentations):

Fiction




• Oksana Lutsyshyna. Ivan and Phoebe. Translated by Nina Murray. Dallas, Texas: Deep Vellum, 2023.
• Chapeye, Artam, et al. Love in Defiance of Pain : Ukrainian Stories. Edited by Ali Kinsella et al., Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022.



• Herstories: An Anthology Of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers. Compiled by Michael M. Naydan. London: Glagoslav, 2014. Amazon
• Two Lands, New Visions: Stories from Canada and Ukraine. Eds. Janice Kulyk Keefer and Solomea Pavlychko. Regina, Sask: Coteau, 1998. Amazon
• Artem Chekh. Absolute Zero. Tr. Oksana Lutsyshyna and Olena Jennings. Glagoslav, 2020. Publisher's online sales
• Andriy Kokotiukha. The Lawyer from Lychakiv Street. Tr. Yuri Trach. Glagoslav, 2020. Publisher's online sales
• Yuri Vynnychuk. Tango of Death. Trans. Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko. New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2019. ISBN 978-1-949966-33-6. Amazon, Publisher
• Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories.
• Oksana Zabuzhko. Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories.

Poetry

• Lyuba Yakimchuk. Apricots of Donbas. Yr. Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2021. Amazon or Publisher
• Natalka Bilotserkivets. Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow. Tr. Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlovsky. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2021. Amazon or Publisher
• Iryna Shuvalova. Pray to the Empty Wells. Tr. Olena Jennings. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2019. Amazon or Publisher
• Mykola Vorobiov. Mountain and Flower. Tr. Maria Rewakowicz. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2020. Amazon or Publisher
• Yuri Izdryk. Smokes. Tr. Roman Ivashkiv and Erin Moure. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2019. Amazon or Publisher
• Iryna Starovoyt. A Field of Foundlings. Tr. Grace Mahoney. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2017. Amazon or Publisher



The writers on our reading list have written other works that are also translated.

• Yuri Andrukhovych
• Recreations
• The Moscoviad
• Perversion
• My Final Territory: Selected Essays
• Songs for a Dead Rooster. Tr Vitaly Chernetsky and Ostap Kin. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2018. Amazon or Publisher
• Oksana Zabuzhko
• The Museum of Abandoned Secrets
• A kingdom of fallen statues: Poems and essays
• Serhii Zhadan
• The Orphanage
• A New Orthography: Poems
• Mesopotamia
• Depeche Mode
• Poems (selected)
• A New Orthodraphy. Tr. John Hennessy and Ostap Kin. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2020. Amazon or Publisher
• Valerii Shevchuk
• The Meek Shall Inherit. PG3949.29 .H47 N2513 1989
• Andrey Kurkov
• Death and the Penguin. Tr. George Bird. London: Harvill, 2003 (or 2011 rpt). Amazon

There are many other writers in contemporary Ukraine who have had some of their works translated.

• Volodymyr Rafeyenko. Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love.
• Yevgenia Belorusets. Lucky Breaks.
• Fiction and Poetry sections from the Winter 2018 Issue of Apofenie an online literary journal. "Happy Naked People," Kateryna Babkina; "Manhort's Copy," Maxym Dupeshko; "A Room for Sorrow," Andriy Lyubka; "Losers Want More," Tanja Maljartschuk; "The Yellow Chinese Jeep," Serhiy Zhadan; "Soldier" and other poems, Oksana Lutsyshyna; "Histology" and other poems, Andriy Tuzhykov; A cycle of poems about the War, Khrystia Vengryniuk.
• Kostiantyn Moskalets. Evening Mead. Translated by Mark Andryczyk with Yaryna Yakubyak
• The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets – An Anthology
• Yuri Izdryk. Wozzeck. Trans. Marko Pavlyshyn. Edmonton: CIUS Press, 2006. ISBN: 1894865065, 9781894865067. CIUS Press, Amazon.ca, ISBN 1-55050-134-8.
• The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha
• Yuri Vynnychuk. The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk
• From Three Worlds: New Ukrainian Writing. Boston: Zephyr, 1996. PG3931 .F713 1996
• Eugenia Kononenko. A Russian Story. Tr. Patrick John Corness. London: Glagoslav, 2013. Amazon
• Sofia Andrukhovych. Felix Austria. In French! English translation also coming soon.

Wartime Poetry links

• For the Record: Conversations with Ukrainian Writers
• Lyuba Yakimchuk
• Marjana Savka
• Ukrainian Wartime Poetry (Lviv - City of Literature)

Critical Works

• Marko Andryczyk. The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction.Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2012. PG3924 .F5 A54 2012
• Vitaly Chernetsky. Mapping postcommunist cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the context of globalization Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. PG3026 .P67 C44 2007 Amazon
• George G. Grabowicz, “The Soviet and the Post-Soviet Discourses of Contemporary Ukraine: Literary Scholarship, the Humanities and the Russian-Ukrainian Interface”
• Roman Horbyk, “Ideologies of the Self: Constructing the Modern Ukrainian Subject in the Other's Modernity” or directly to the pdf file. Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, No 3 (2016), 89–103, DOI: https://doi.org/10.18523/kmhj73970.2016-3.89-103
• Marko Pavlyshyn. “Post-Colonial Features in Contemporary Ukrainian Culture” ASEES, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1992) 41–55, or here.
• Marko Pavlyshyn, “Ukrainian Literature and the Erotics of Postcolonialis,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (June 1993), pp. 110-126, or here.
• Maria Rewakowicz. Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1991–2011. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Robarts
• Myroslav Shkandrij, “The Postcolonial Moment in Ukrainian Writing,” in Sovietology to Postcoloniality. Poland and Ukraine in the Postcolonial Perspective, Södertörn Academic Studies 32, Stockholm, 2007, 83–92
• Stephen Velychenko, “The Issue of Russian Colonialism in Ukrainian Thought,” Ab Imperio no. 1 (2002) 323–66.
• Tanya Zaharchenko. Where Currents Meet: Frontiers in Post-Soviet Fiction of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Budapest, CEU Press, 2016. PG3501 .U4 Z34 2016
• Interview with Andrey Kurkov
• Contemporary Ukraine on the Cultural Map of Europe, ed. Larissa M. L. Zaleska Onyshkevych and Maria G. Rewakowicz. Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2009. DK508.4 .C66 2009X Essays on Literature in Section II of the collection, pp. 155–294.