Sofia Andrukhovych (* 17 November 1982) in Ivano-Frankivsk) is a contemporary Ukrainian writer and translator. She is the daughter of another Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych.
I am very happy that this novel will be published in English in 2025 (at least the 1st half it seems). Considering current events in the world, not only Ukraine, it is It is a very important book helping to understand the role of historical memory and forgetting among other things and its impact on the present. And simply it is a great novel.
The first half has been published in German already.
Sophia is a serious thinker. The book or her recent essays has been published in France last month.
Initial thoughts:
Very ambitious, thought-provoking and complex novel, elegant in parts. It raises difficult questions that are not yet deeply processed by the Ukrainian society, such as Holocaust from the perspective of the Ukrainians, the relationship between historical memory and identity and some others. The author is daring and wonderful stylist. I was not totally convinced by some elements of the execution of the novel. But it is a book to read, think about and talk with the others. In one sentence - in spite of its length, it needs to be translated asap and it deserves a wide readership.
Review
This novel belongs to the European tradition. It is the one of those novels, sprawling, fragmentary, combining fictional and essay parts and dealing with the themes both universal and very urgent. On the other hand, it is a very Ukrainian novel. In spite of its fragmentary nature, or maybe because of it, it attempts to create a continuous narrative out of the patches of Ukrainian history previously either deliberately hidden and destroyed or simply widely unknown. The common thread running through the book is the relationship between personal and historical memory. Inevitably this leads to the question of what is truth鈥�
Amadoka is a huge lake that existed on the territory of Ukraine according Herodotus or Ptolemy and the outlines of ancient maps. However, there is no any geological trace of its existence. Was it a real lake or was it a story specially constructed by the ancient historians with some purpose lost or forgotten since? The existence of this non-existent lake serves a big metaphor for the novel.
The architecture of this novel is very ambitious. It is a daring mixture of genres that bears the risk to be unsuccessful in less able hands. Under a single roof, Andrukhovich manages to combine a thriller; a love story; a historical meditation; an account of the Holocaust told by several unreliable narrators and an essay, a book within the book, devoted to Ukrainian intellectuals perished in Stalin鈥檚 camps known as 鈥渢he executed renaissance鈥� in the 30s of the 20th century.
A man (his name is Bohdan) has been severely wounded during the first stage of the current Russo-Ukrainian War in Donbas. As a result, he has completely lost his memory and his appearance is hardly recognisable. He has been picked up from the hospital by a women who claims to be his wife (Romana). This woman surrounds him by his personal belongings and tells him stories about him and his family. She believes these stories would help to return his memory. But he, in his current state, has no idea who she is.
Romana becomes the main narrator of the novel. We do not know how reliable she is. We do not know who is the man. And this plot, by itself pretty intriguing, serves as the framing device for the two relatively independent texts within the novel.
The first is a story of tragic events during the war in Buchach, a town in Western Ukraine. These events include Holocaust, Ukrainian freedom fighting and daily life during the Nazi occupation mainly through the focus on the tragic dynamic between the neighbours.
Romana uses a box of the old photos as prompts for her stories. This gives this part a dreamy, meditative and fragmentary nature as each little episode is focused around a single image. I felt a strong Sebaldian influence over this part. But unlike Sebald, Andrukhovich has chosen not to include real images. Instead each image is described by the writer as a part of a story. It is unclear where the images exist beyond the page or she describes totally fictional stills composed by her own imagination. They could contain an object, a view of landscape or fragment of a body or a face. Their composition, always original and in each individual case, it serves as a window into the text that follows. And the sentences are often very beautiful. It is obviously goes beyond the wisdom of 鈥渟how not tell鈥� well known to each English speaking child. But it very effective and elegant tool in the case of this text.
Holocaust narratives is an established sub-genre of European literature. But what makes this one unique is a perspective and the place. She attempts to show these events from the perspective of Ukrainian population. Even in the West those narratives often either focused on the victims or on the Nazis, the direct perpetrators. They rarely look at the events through the eyes of the ordinary the French or Italians or Poles or Hungarians. In Ukraine, even more so, the discussion of the roles of the ordinary Ukrainians in this tragedy never properly took place in the society. It is not unique to Ukraine. All Eastern Europe immediately went into the sphere of influence of the Soviets. Therefore only one narrative was possible - the officially told one. I鈥檝e recently come across the article by Linda Kinstler. She has just published her own book [ ]. Her relatives are appeared to be both on the victims and on the perpetrators鈥檚 side. Here is what she says:
鈥淚t is not a coincidence that the same region where war crimes are currently being committed is also where the full story of the Holocaust is only now starting to be told. The nations of eastern Europe have had far less time to crack the 鈥渃ode鈥� that can unleash the worst crimes. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the historians, writers, poets, prosecutors and artists who tried to uncover what had happened in their cities and villages had to make sure their findings did not challenge Soviet accounts of the atrocities. As far as Soviet authorities were concerned, it was 鈥減eaceful Soviet citizens鈥� who the Germans murdered, a phrase that masked the particularity of the crime and its genocidal aim. It was this phrase that they inscribed upon monuments to the dead. Fearing that to honour the Jews who were killed would risk nurturing Jewish nationalism at the expense of Soviet collectivity, they ended up burying the true nature of the crime.鈥�
And in this part of the novel, Andrukohovich attempts to properly start this dialogue with the past; to help the new generation of Ukrainians to come to terms with the fact that some of their ancestors where not the victims or brave fighters of the resistance. Some of them were either at the service of the Nazis or simply perpetrators of the crimes against their neighbours, predominantly Jewish but also the Poles and even fellow Ukrainians.
Andrukhovich does not try to escape into simple explanations:
鈥淭o think they were mad means to justify. The mad do not need to be hold responsible. You knew that this is just non convincing round about that did not explain anything, cheap and dishonest trick. In reality, in many senses their mind was even sharper, made their ability to adapt to the situation in which all old systems of coordinates were torn or changed. He wanted to say 鈥� adapt to survive鈥�, but it was not always like that. Often it was to adapt to feel better and be better off. 鈥�
There is a character who both works as a Nazi police but helps some Jews almost against his will. But I would be interested for the writer even to go further - to show a character, in the Nazi service or otherwise who would be convinced he was doing the right thing to the end, his underlying motivation And then - the perspective of the children and grandchildren of such an individual, their experience of living with the knowledge about the crime of their grandparent.
But generally, the novel does poses this question: those who committed the crimes, horrific or even small, those who simply stood aside thinking of their own skin, their children and even their grandchildren - how they should remember? Even the survivors, and the others who where helping the victims?
Personal memory is quite a peculiar thing. People often try to suppress a traumatic experience in order to continue their lives. Often they go even farther - they make up themselves a story. The story is much more palatable than the truth. But it becomes their truth:
鈥淵ou knew that they did not lie in many cases. They did truly believed in what they said. They 鈥渞emembered鈥� those things they believed in.鈥� tells Romana to Bohdan about his grandmothers. In one the interviews, Andrukhovich mentioned the story of a Belgium girl, Mishi Defonseca. I did not know about this story before. But it underlines how creative the memory could be in suppressing what one does not want to accept. Mishi, in her mature years wrote a book how she, being a Jewish girl escaped from the Nazis and survived with the wolves. The book has become an international bestseller. Only problem with all of this was that it was all a tale. Never really happened. In reality, her dad has betrayed his fellow partisans. And she was called a 鈥渢raitor鈥檚 daughter鈥�. So she escaped in her story which was totally made up. When all of it was revealed the author issued the statement:
"The book is a story, it's my story. It's not the true reality, but it is my reality. There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world.鈥�
But here lies the rub: our collective memory, our perception of history and the truth is built of those individual little stories. And where lies the border when a bunch of these little stories becomes a collective amnesia or worse - sheer historical lie used to build up, let鈥檚 say, a national myth? 鈥淲ho controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past鈥� I often hear this sentence by Orwell nowadays in different contexts. There is also a deeper problem here. What constitutes the closure for certain tragic events? Does historical truth require the ancestors of the perpetrators accept some measure of collective guilt? Or is it better to ignore this question for the coherence of the present society? Is this coherence even possible without some kind of acknowledgement?
Bohdan with his complete amnesia is a successful metaphor for this phenomena. In theory Romana, can construct his whole identity from scratch by carefully selecting which stories to feed to his consciousness. But is it at all possible to sustain this? Also to which extent a person鈥檚 identity is defined by his memory? This last question is a tangential consideration but the one this novel is dealing with as well.
In this part of the novel, she also creates a bunch of wonderful, fully fledged and memorable characters. For me it was the most successful part.
As this part ends with its tragic and not totally expected culmination, the novel is changing its gear again. The third part is an extended essay. It mostly focuses on the 鈥渆xecuted renaissance鈥�, but also contains meditation on the thinkers and the artists of the 18th century such as Skovoroda, Pinzel and Baal Shem Tov. 鈥淓xecuted renaissance鈥� are Ukrainian intellectuals of the 20s and the 30s of the 20th century. The majority of them perished in gulags. Many of them were shoot in the period of just one week in 1937 in Sandarmokh. They say the killers were so physically tired from shooting they need to be replaced periodically.
鈥淭he culmination of the actions of the Soviet repressive regime was the mass executions of the "counter-revolutionaries" committed on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the October coup. Almost three hundred representatives of the Ukrainian renaissance of the 1920s were shot between 27 October and 4 November at Sandarmokh, a massive killing field in Karelia (northwest Russia).鈥� (Wikipedia)
The essay is written in a form of a documentary novel by an imaginary scholar. In this part, it is evident how much research Andrukhovich has put into her work and how passionate she was about those perished writers. She wants to underline to her readers that behind each of those names there was an individual with a unique personal story. She wants to preserve every detail and make sure they do not disappear from our memory behind the sheer monstrosity of the crime. The intention is very honourable. However, it did not quite work for me within the frame of the novel as a whole. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the factual information. It would work better if she would make this part tighter and focus on a fewer personalities.
It is clear that her main interest lies within the triangle of Zerov, Domontovych and the woman they both loved. This story by itself would take a whole novel to explore. Viktor Petrov (Domontovych) was a polymath, the writer, literary critic and the scientist. He was very talented. But the story of his life is surrounded by a mystery. He was not executed during the purges, he was collaborating with the Nazis in the occupied Ukraine. Later he lived in Munich, but then disappeared and resurfaced in Russia. He was allowed to come back to Kyiv only for the last decade of his life. He then married the wife of his friend, professor Zerov, who was executed 20 years before. No-one knows for sure what was Petrov. Was he a double agent? Very likely. But there are no facts available. What is known though that he was a very talented writer but stopped writing novels after the 30s. In the 20s he wrote a novel that by some of its themes echos 鈥淟olita鈥�. Being ethnologist, he also allegedly saved a whole people in Crimea from the genocide during the war testifying there were not the Semites to the Nazis.
I totally understand why Andrukhovich would be attracted to his story. I appreciate her desire to stick to the known facts and live the gaps where there was no facts available. However, the story with Domontovych left me longing for some scenario, a speculation what kind of person he really was as the facts are so bare. I think Andrukhovych鈥檚 idea was to leave it to the imagination of the reader. Normally, I like this approach in fiction. But in this case, I would be interested in her doing a creative work, fleshing this man out of the darkness for me, even if it would be his fictional self.
The novel ends at the present while we come back to the story of Bohdan and Romana. This last part speeds up substantially and turns into a twisty thriller. It also throws out a few additional questions into the matter of truth. For example, how social media changes our perception of certain facts and people. When we later meet these people in real life, we still often chose to believe in the story created in the virtual reality rather than our own eyes.
It is always good feeling when the work of fiction makes a dialogue in your mind with other books you鈥檝e read previously. It was the case for me with this book. First of all, the novel by Oxana Zabushko comes to mind. This is another grand Ukrainian novel written about 10 years ago. It is also quite daring and ambitious. There is a historical part in it dealing with the events of the war. I think there are even certain similarities in the plot. But Zabuzhko focuses more on the Ukrainian freedom fighting. While Andrukhovych is more interested in the events of Holocaust.
Another book that comes to mind is Similar to Tokarzhuk, Andrukhovych is not afraid of the volume and of scaring her readers away by the number of pages. Both novels take place in approximately the same geographical territory but a few centuries apart. Moreover, Andrukhovych touches upon the thinkers of the 18th century in her novel. Those thinkers precede Frank, the main character of Tokarzhuk opus. Both novels investigate the untold, less known stories from the past in order to explain the present. But unlike Tokarzhuk who deals with the real historical figures, Andrukhovych creates the characters and the plot within the reality of the historical period in the Holocaust part. In the essay part, she is closer to Tokarzhuk's idea of preserving as many factual details as possible. But Olga then goes and fills the gaps for the areas where the facts are not available. Andrukhovych decides to leave those gaps empty.
And the last comparison is more unlikely by Ingeborg Bachman. I think Bachman鈥檚 generation of the Austrian writers were doing exactly what was left unprocessed in the Eastern European literature and what Andrukhovych now tries to achieve. Both Bachmann and her are dealing with the generational trauma. The situations, when the second generation either refuse to acknowledge the direct or passive participation of their parents in the terrific crimes or are becoming the victims of this knowledge, mentally destroyed.
Overall I enjoyed the sprawling nature of this work and its stylistic variety. However, I think it would benefit if the edit would be tighter. This relates to the Holocaust part, but even more to essay鈥檚 part. The amount of names and factual material distracted my attention from the ideas and questions this part attempts to pose. This was especially pity as there were brilliant fragments in the essay, stylistically and intellectually perfect.
Another more personal issue I鈥檝e had with the novel is the plot. It is carefully crafted and sustains itself throughout. But I almost wished it would be less of it, less twists, less suspense and mystery. Andrukhovych mentioned somewhere that for her literature was often a hyperbola of reality. I would personally prefer an understatement in some situations. However, I appreciate that this is exactly what might be considered a strength by many other readers of the book.
Until very late in the novel I was not sure how Andrukhovych would be able to connect all of this together. She did it. The novel itself could stand as metaphor for desire of continuity in the history of Ukraine while certain events and the whole historical epochs were deliberately and forcibly excluded from the memory of its people. We experience now again and in real time how the empire from the east tries to destroy the right of this nation to survive as free people with their own land, country, language and culture. The empire will not succeed. And the novel is an evidence how it is possible to glue broken pieces together and recreate the whole, even if it is often hard, ungrateful and tragic work. Some links:
Executed Renaissance:
Victor Petrov (Domontovich):
The article by Linda Kinstler:
is a historical investigation of the events in Buchach before and during the WW2.
A captivating piece on the complexity of identity, memory, forgetting and history. In fact, this novel is almost obsessed with memory, a kind of memory which is no more. Despite a certain sense of fragmentation, just like on the illustration on the cover, I feel there is a single thread than binds everything together, but I haven鈥檛 figured it out yet. I hope to share more details after I finish reading.
Good news (is it even possible these days?) - Simon & Schuster has acquired the worldwide English translation rights to this novel - .