Book recommendation from the Kyiv Independent. ‘Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love’ (Patreon)

Hey Kyiv Independent supporters,

This is Kate Tsurkan. I used to work on the news desk but as of this month I’ve made the shift to culture reporter, so I’m excited to start off by recommending you one of the many Ukrainian novels that are now available in English translation.

Volodymyr Rafeyenko's “Mondegreen” was published by Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute in 2022. It delves into the life of Haba Habinsky, an internally displaced person from Donetsk who finds himself in Kyiv following the Russian invasion of 2014. The novel's non-linear structure mirrors the whirlwind of thoughts experienced by a refugee whose entire existence has been upended. Once a respected university professor in Donetsk, Habinsky now finds himself making ends meet by restocking shelves in a Kyiv supermarket. He has also made the choice to start communicating exclusively in Ukrainian, which adds another level of dissociation and disorientation into his life.

After talking with several IDPs from Luhansk and Donetsk who fled to cities like Kyiv after 2014, I can say that the novel aptly captures the plight of individuals internally displaced by war, caught in the paradox of being within their own country yet feeling estranged from the notion of home.

Habinsky is not only tasked with orienting himself in a new city and forging new relationships. He also needs to process his poignant flashbacks of the situation in Donetsk leading up to the start of the war. Some individuals, like Habinsky, fled their homes. However, others were lured by the death drive preachings of Russian proxy troops, essentially becoming strangers to their loved ones overnight.

It is a deeply lyrical novel that offers the reader a fresh perspective on Ukrainian identity, and how Russian aggression has tried for generations to eradicate it.

I tend to think of this novel as a work of autofiction (a fictionalized autobiography) because much of it is similar to Rafeyenko’s own life. He was also a professor in Donetsk, fled in 2014, started his life anew in Kyiv, and committed himself to only writing in Ukrainian. He is one of several formerly Russian-speaking writers who made the switch, and it is no easy choice. A lot of Ukrainian writers have done everything possible to support him in this endeavor. I respect him immensely not only for his talent, but for his resilience.

“Mondegreen” is published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research institute and is available for purchase on their website, as well as from most major book retailers.

You can read an excerpt from the novel “Mondegreen” here: https://lithub.com/an-excerpt-from-mondegreen-a-new-novel-of-wartime-ukraine/

You can also read an essay of Rafeyenko that I translated, where he goes deeper into describing why it was important for him to stop speaking Russian, and how he completely cut the language out of his life following the start of the full-scale invasion:

https://lithub.com/i-once-wrote-and-spoke-and-thought-in-russian-no-more/

I have a lot of culture content in the works so keep an eye on the Kyiv Independent’s culture desk!

Best,

Kate Tsurkan