7 best books on Ukrainian identity

Who are we? How do we differ from other nations? How is it to make a choice and build your own Ukrainian identity? How does this identity intersect with sexuality? How is identity expressed in the Ukrainian language? Up. Culture She collected a selection of books about the crisis of national identity. The crisis from which power comes.

This collection includes the legendary texts of the classics, as well as newer works about military reality. All of them – about finding yourself. And, of course, about Patos, Eros and Tanatos.

At the turn of the XX and XXI centuries, the cult text of Oksana Zabuzhko caused scandals and stormy discussions. However, even now, almost 30 years in the first publication, it affects the painful nerve. The intellectual breaks the taboo topics, relaxedly speaks of physicality and injury, and the main character swears dirty, which is quite bad for the Soviet woman. And for post -Soviet, too.

« Field Research … » – It is an autobiographical novel at the same time about women’s experience and national identity. Oksana’s main character falls in love with a hemous artist Nicholas K .. Their destructive Relationships (today they are called abyss) bring physical and mental pain to the woman. Personal traumatic experience of the relationship of the heroine is intertwined with the injury of a citizen of a post -colonial state, which has just restored her own independence. No wonder in the novel the writer mentions the Nobel laureate Tony Morrison, who studied female identity and post -colonial realities.

The character agrees to less, worse – a toxic man who is unable to respect and listen to a partner, but to his understanding whose behavior is recognizable. She is restrained by the fear of a woman against her husband and Ukrainian against the world, which will later turn into an inconvenient desire to protect her own borders.

Meridian Czernowitz, 2019 Book Book

One of the most important modern texts about the crisis of national identity. Unfortunately, there is no book in paper because the circulation is over and there are no new circulations yet. But there is a free audio with original intonations read by Rafieenko himself.

Once a Russian -speaking author from Donetsk, Rafieenko turned The novel observation of your own transition to Ukrainian. The main character « Mondeggin » is Gabriel Gabinsky, or just a garage. Intellectual and teacher, he moved from Donetsk to the capital at the beginning of the Russian war in 2014. And now he tries to set up and master Ukrainian there.

Since the hero studies it, in particular, from the pearls of folk wisdom, he is a mare of the head of the same name fairy tale. She becomes his teacher – teaches the rules and wisdom of the word usage. But at the same time, her fantasmagoric figure always accompanies Gabu – both at home and among people. The mare heads even the sexual life of the hero.

Just as the Gaba-Book, to whom the grandmother read Ukrainian folk tales against the night and who brightly imagined the character of the character and felt great fear, the adult Gaba was experiencing existential horror, renouncing a certain part of his own identity-Russian-speaking.

The hero tries to find out, « What is Ukrainian essence if compared to, say, with Russian ». He seeks to separate the Ukrainian from everything else and create a new pro -Ukrainian memory. Will the Gaba be able to get out alive from national-eighth competitions with a mare and create a new identity?

Laboratory Publishing House Cover, 2023

Published in 2023, Anastasia Levkova’s novel became a bestseller. This is the story of Crimea and the search for national identity because of the regional identity. The nameless main character (later learning her name) grows in the irrigated Crimea, whose greatness is determined by the relevant of the « great » Russian.

According to aggressive propaganda and school teacher, the island is famous, because it is sung by all sorts of Pushkin, fat and chief. At the same time, there is also a large Crimean Tatar community with which the heroine has a close connection in childhood – and that involuntarily studies the Crimean Tatar.

Somewhere there, at the mainland, there is a Ukraine, to which an adult character will leave after the occupation of Crimea. During his departure and farewell to the island, the reader first hears her name – Oksana. The author comments that then the heroine is no longer in the Crimea, but not yet on the mainland. However, she has already made a choice – to be Ukrainian in Ukraine. The final awareness of her own identity to Oksana Ustayeva will come later with a thorny way of important illumination and reflection.

Book Cover from the Old Lion Publishing House, 2019

A deep psychological novel about the revolution on granite and the younger generation of Ukrainians and Ukrainian women, which in October 1990 came out with the demands of the current authorities on the Independence Square (then the area of ​​the October Revolution). For the book « Ivan and Fab » the writer received the Shevchenko Prize in 2021. The publishing house has ended the book, you can search in bookstores or libraries.

Ivan is one of the participants of the student anti -Soviet movement. He was a guard on the Maidan, « kept the perimeter » and did not starve with the students. Although he was near, he was not involved in the revolution. He also hid his participation from Magrita Mother. Ivan, like everyone, is afraid of the KGB persecution, and an agent of Sashko appears on his grief, with whom the hero seems to be able to understand.

The anxiety and fear, laid down in the collective consciousness of Ukrainians in the Soviet times, tend to be over Ivan Damoklov’s sword. He is confused – he does not understand how to live on. Therefore, it is inertia – marries a frosty poet Fab and has a classic patriarchal family. In it from the impotence and insolvency of a man, a woman becomes powerful. The unconscious continues leads to the fact that Ivan and Fabs become alone, completely alienated, so another crippled family is born, which is either silent or screaming.

Book cover from Komor Publishing House, 2023

It is a story about the choice of Ukrainian identity, which is made by very different men and women in the pre -war irrigated Kharkiv. Housewive Ulyana, despised by her husband and teenage daughter. The taxi driver Nicholas, whom they are afraid, does not want to be Kolyan.

Lyubka – by word to pocket will not climb and easily wins in verbal herites. Lisa, who suffers from family strife and whom his mother and grandmother declared a boycott. These people are united by a sincere desire to master and move into Ukrainian in a joint spoken club. They take their uncertain steps, and their friends and relatives do not support, but make fun or do not make their important decision at all.

Transition is not only an attempt to Ukrainian, but also a borderline in which characters and characters try to overcome their own injuries and pain. And yet – to change your own destiny. Ulyana seeks to be heard and beloved. Nicholas wants him to be taken seriously and without strange fear. Lisa dreams of having a safe space for self -expression. Lyubka is to reconcile with his only son. And what about their lives with the transition to Ukrainian lives for the better?

BUKCK Publishing House Cover, 2024

The philosophical and social novel « The Apostle Chern » is the last great text of Olga Kobylyanska, a well-known master of psychological realism and intellectual prose. Written during 1921–1926, the novel was banned in Soviet Ukraine as nationalist. This is not surprising, because the text about the intelligentsia at that time is full of sincere patriotism and passion for the struggle for the Ukrainian national idea.

At the center of the novel is Ukrainian Julian Tesarevich, who, under the firm hand of the despotic father, grows up from a sensitive boy by a responsible young man. He is interested in classical philology, admires the custom of Greek and ancient Roman figures – even the name testifies to his relation to glorious Ukrainians.

The Cesarevich family included military and theologians – the so -called « Apostles of the Sword » and « Apostles of Cherni ». There are three ways to Julian: military career, clergy and philology.

The great intrigue of the novel – will Julian Caesarevich escape and still become the Apostle Chern, the servant of the people, how do his family and spiritual mentor, Father Zakhari, seek it? Will the Apostle of the Sword be pleased with yourself? The book is relevant in the light of the Great War, when many Ukrainians and Ukrainian women choose to protect the state.

The cover of reissue from the old lion’s publishing house

Another famous text since the 1990s. A novel about the collapse of the Russian Empire, post -colonial being and the search for Ukrainian identity. The main character Otto von F. is both a clown and a prophet – lives one day in Moscow. But what a day! It falls into a variety of circles – from dark naked in the abandoned tapes to the power -holders, who are luxurious in the underground city under the capital.

INThe other sees three -meter rats in the Moscow subway and falls on the hook to the KGB, and therefore experiences a border existential experience close to death. Once in the territory of his state, Otto von F. seeks to eradicate any Soviet or Russian influence.

Thus, through the thriller, satire and phantasmagoric visions, Andrukhovich shows how the Ukrainian intellectual in the post-colonial state gets rid of the marginalization of the Soviet man and turns into a conscious Eurocentric. Meanwhile, the « empire breathes » is demoralized, and we look forward to it.