Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love
Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love
Volodymyr Rafeyenko – Author
Mark Andryczyk – Translator
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute - Publisher
“In recognition of this book’s contribution to important processes of change in the way writers approach language in contemporary Ukrainian literature.”
In 2014, a well-known award-winning Russian-language writer from the Ukrainian city of Donetsk chose to escape his hometown because he did not want to live under Russian occupation. In 2019, displaced in Kyiv, he published his novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, which was his first ever literary work written in Ukrainian. Volodymyr Rafeyenko now insists that he will not go back to writing in Russian, which he once considered his native language. Rafeyenko represents a broader trend among Russian-language writers in Ukraine who, as a matter of principle, have switched to writing in Ukrainian. Indeed, they have changed not only their medium of communication, but their entire consciousness and world view.
Volodymyr Rafeyenko / Author
Mark Andryczyk – Translator