Voroshilovgrad

"Voroshilovgrad is an unsentimental novel about human relationships in conditions of brutality in which there is not a single act of betrayal... In his prose there is no nostalgia, but there is genuine affection, rough and profound. Even in this brutish habitus, there is trust, loyalty, and love." -- Marci Shore, The New Yorker "Voroshilovgrad is more, however, than an exercise in post-Soviet social realism. There is something deeply mythological about the novel, and, like many myths, it is a story of homecoming... Zhadan's language is suitably elastic, swinging from the tough, streetwise irony of a Ukrainian Irvine Welsh to flights of ebullient poetry more reminiscent of Bruno Schulz." -- Uilleam Blacker, Times Literary Supplement "A homecoming is by turns magical and brutal in Zhadan's impressive picaresque novel... For Zhadan, loyalty and fraternity are the life-giving forces in this exhausted, fertile, near-anarchic corner of the country ... readers will be touched by his devotion to a land of haunted beauty, 'high sky,' and 'black earth.'" -- Publishers Weekly "With Voroshilovgrad, Zhadan has created an authentic poetics of post--Soviet rural devastation. His ragged, sympathetic characters aren't the newly rich post--Soviets of Moscow, the urban oligarchs Peter Pomerantsev has described, who "sing hymns to Russian religious conservatism -- and keep their money and families in London." They are individuals struggling to come to terms with their place in history and with the history of their place." -- Amelia Glaser, Los Angeles Review of Books "A trippy novel of contemporary Ukraine ... set far away from the bustle of the metropolis and the Maidan, yet no less representative of the unsettled state of a country unable to transition. A bit meandering--but generally in a good way--Voroshilovgrad is an entertaining sort-of-road-novel with quite a bit of depth to it." -- Michael Orthofer, Complete Review "Zhadan's canvas is large and is filled with bold characters... [he] also tosses into the mix fantastic and surreal flights of prose; poetic descriptions of the still-beautiful parts of the Ukraine, with its rich, black, enduring earth." -- Willard Manus, Lively Arts "Ukraine's best-known poet and the country's most famous counter-culture writer." -- Sally McGrane, The New Yorker "Blurring the boundaries between time and space as well as place, Voroshilovgrad narrates the journey of Herman, an advertising executive, who returns to his remote home after years of city living to find his missing brother." -- World Literature Today's Recommended Summer Reads 2016 "Zhadan is a writer who is a rock star, like Byron in the early nineteenth century was a rock star." -- Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky, professor of Slavic Literature at the University of Kansas, The New Yorker "Voroshilovgrad crosses, with tremendous grace, back and forth between lyrical dreaminess and brutal nightmarishness, and Zhadan works in lots of absurdity... it's absurdity of the sort that feels normal in books set in the Former Soviet Union, making everything in Voroshilovgrad feel paradoxically both real and bizarre." -- Lisa Espenschade, Lizok's Bookshelf "A fascinating exploration into a post-soviet Ukraine. Not only does it explore the effects of communism to an industrial city, but also the power vacuum left behind when the Soviet Union collapsed." -- Michael Kitto, Knowledge Lost "A dark but funny tale of an urbanite who returns to his hometown to run his brother's gas station. It's a road novel with splashes of magical realism and an embrace of fraternal loyalty. In hindsight, the bleak, disheartening environs and attitudes make it hard not to notice parallels to Trumpian middle America." -- Jay Trachtenberg, The Austin Chronicle "An entertaining tale ... Trouble keeps finding Herman, and it's hard not to root for him." -- Roman Augustovitz, Minneapolis Star-Tribune Voroshilovgrad is a road novel that escapes itself...[it] evokes the notion that the things we may consider nearest and dearest (romantic love, "brotherhood" and even more cynical values like materialism) are, rather than the be-all and end-all, just the tip of the iceberg emerging from the more alien depths of human motivation." -- Elisabeth Cook, Lit All Over "The book veers from poetic lyricism to brutal realism. And sometimes we get both at the same time, a feat I would have thought impossible, but Zhadan pulls it off." -- Zoe Brooks, Magic Realism "A strange mixture of magical realism, road novel, and spiritual journey ... By turns jaunty, hilarious, poignant, and depressing, Voroshilovgrad tells an important story about the people left in the wake of Communism's collapse, and the ways in which they try to build a future." -- Rachel Cordasco, Bookishly Witty "Zhadan's language is wild and powerful. The rhythm structuring his endless sentences demonstrates his beginnings as a poet." -- Jutta Lindekugel, World Literature Today "A generation's manifesto." -- Liza Novikova, Izvestiya (Russia) "Zhadan's prose is so poetic, his free verse so prosaic. It is difficult to assign a genre to his work: memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation -- or a mixture of all these, centered on the themes 'my generation' and 'our epoch'." -- The New Literary Review (Russia) "The power source for Zhadan's writing is in its linguistic passion." -- Die Zeit (Germany) "One of the most important creative forces in modern Ukrainian alternative culture. He writes desolately, brashly, deliriously, associatively, cleverly and with laugh-out-loud humor and great empathy for his characters..." -- KulturSpiegel (Germany) "There is no summarizing the spicy, hot, sweet, vicious improvisations of Serhiy Zhadan--this is verbal jazz." -- Kirill Ankudinov, Vzglyad.ru (Russia)