International Authors Book Club

Read an author of your choosing from a predetermined country. February's nation is Ukraine. We will meet each third Thursday of the month to discuss your author, their works, and any themes they explore.

To get you started, check out our list of a few literary award-winning authors. The bolded fiction titles are available through your Santa Fe Public Library as books or ebooks (Hoopla or Overdrive/Libby).

For disability accommodations, please contact a Programs Manager for SFPL at 505-955-6786 or 505-955-2817.

Suggested authors:

Volodymyr Arenev, author of The Exclusion Zone in Future Science Fiction Digest (ebook)

Arenev is a pen name for science fiction writer Volodymyr Puziy. He was born in 1978 in Kyiv, where he still lives today. His writing includes multiple fantasy novels, short stories, and short story collections but this is one of the few English translations. 

Artem Chapeye, author of The Ukraine (ebook)

The four-time BBC Book of the Year finalist delivers a masterful portrayal of a country between wars and at war as experienced by the idiosyncratic people the narrator encounters in towns and villages and desolate stretches across the land.

He also appears in Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories (ebook), which aims to bring contemporary Ukrainian literature to the world. The range of voices, settings, and subjects in this vivid and varied collection show us how to "love in defiance of pain"- an apt phrase taken from the first story in this book. Authors include: Sophia Andrukhovych, Yuri Andrukhovych, Stanislav Aseyev, Kateryna Babkina, Artem Chapeye, Liubko Deresh, Kateryna Kalytko, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Vasyl Makhno, Tanja Maljartschuk, Taras Prokhasko, Oleg Sentsov, Natalka Sniadanko, Olena Stiazhkina, Sashko Ushkalov, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Serhiy Zhadan.

Artem Chekh, author of Absolute Zero (ebook)

The book is a first-person account of a soldier's journey based on Artem Chekh's diary that he wrote while and after his service in the war in Donbas. One of the most important messages the book conveys is that war means pain. Chekh is not showing the reader any heroic combat, focusing instead on the quiet, mundane, and harsh soldier's life. Chekh masterfully selects the most poignant details of this kind of life.

Tamara Duda, author of Daughter (ebook)

As the author states in the foreword, her debut "...is about courage, too, about the out-and-out courage to claim what is rightfully yours, to recognize it, to dig in your heels, and never give away to anyone what is yours, your home, your motherland, your heart, your right to walk with your head held high. “

Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odesa (ebook) and Deaf Republic (book)

Kaminsky is a poet, critic, translator and professor best known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odesa and Deaf Republic, which have earned him several awards. In 2019, the BBC named Kaminsky among "12 Artists who changed the world."

Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear -- they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language.

Nataliya Kobrynska, various works

Kobrynska, a groundbreaking Ukrainian feminist, whose work is available as part of Virginia’s Sisters, an ebook anthology of short stories and poetry by feminist contemporaries of Virginia Woolf, who were writing about work, discrimination, war, relationships, sexuality and love in the early part of the 20th Century. This book offers a diverse and international array of over 20 literary gems from women writers living in Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Italy, Palestine, Romania, Russia, Spain and Ukraine.

Andrey Kurkov, author of The Silver Bone (book) and Grey Bees (ebook)

A perplexing mystery, The Silver Bone, introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he is tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early 20th century. Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions vie for control of Ukraine. 

With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine's most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict in Grey Bees. Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to sporadic violence and constant propaganda for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees.

Tanja Maljartschuk, author of Forgottenness (book and ebook)

An award-winning novel from one of Ukraine's most prolific contemporary authors, Forgottenness tells a spellbinding story of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time. An exceedingly anxious narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace researching Viacheslav Lypynskyi a social and political activist of Polish descent who played a pivotal role in the struggle for Ukrainian independence and who nursed his own comorbidities.

Maria Matios, author of Hardly Ever Otherwise (ebook)

Painting a tortured picture of life's harsh brutality in the region, Maria provides an insight into the complicated history of this remote corner of the Carpathian Mountains. Each character is flawed, detestable, but in the book's finale they incite compassion as their painful past is steadily revealed. The eternal dilemma of sin and atonement pervades the pages of this murder mystery.

Zinaida Tulub, author of The Exile (ebook)

This work of historical fiction focuses on Taras Shevchenko (aka Kobzar), the outstanding Ukrainian poet and artist. The idea of writing about Shevchenko first occurred to her when she was in her thirties while living in exile in Kazakhstan (1947-1956). The book celebrates Shevchenko's indomitable will and his burning desire to fight for the liberation of the nation, even when he was in exile. Armed with a wealth of detailed biographical information about Shevchenko, Tulub created a thrilling portrait of the poet that is both historically accurate and artistically convincing. Shevchenko’s works are available as Kobzar and Classics of Ukrainian Literature (ebooks).

Oksana Zabuzhko, author of Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (book)

This memoir focuses on recollections of an abusive relationship and struggles of a literary career. Themes of love and hatred and violence and comfort are explored in stream of consciousness writing style.

Serhiy Zhadan, author of Mesopotamia and The Orphanage (books)

Mesopotamia is nine interconnected stories from the troubled streets of Ukraine and Zhadan's ode to Kharkiv, the traditionally Russian-speaking city in Eastern Ukraine where he made his home.

Often compared to Rimbaud, Charles Bukowski and Irvine Welsh, Zhadan employs both prose and poetry to address the disillusionment, complications, and complexities that have marked Ukrainian life in the decades following the Soviet Union's collapse. This new work provides an extraordinary depiction of the lives of working-class Ukrainians struggling against an implacable fate: the road forward seems blocked at every turn by demagogic forces and remnants of the Russian past.

When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a 35-year-old teacher, sets out for The Orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home. Three ebooks also are available: Depeche Mode, Voroshilovgrad and The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Poets.