Description
About the Author
Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary and film critic. Although he initially wrote and published in Russian, his novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love was his first written in Ukrainian. It was nominated for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine's highest award in arts and culture. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days. Mark Andryczyk teaches Ukrainian literature and is Associate Research Scholar in the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction and has published translations of numerous Ukrainian poets and writers.
Reviews
True to its title, Rafeyenko's Mondegreen is a tapestry of Soviet rock lyrics, traditional folk ballads, the poems of Taras Shevchenko, and contemporary literary memes, all filtered through the ears of a Ukrainian language learner...Given the complexity of the text, it's astonishing how much Andryczyk was able to impart in his English version. Moreover, the translation leaves the reader not with a sense of loss but with a feeling that over the horizon there is a tantalizingly rich and vibrant world that one can only access if they too learn Ukrainian...Mondegreen is truly indulgent, a lyrical celebration of words and their power, not just to express but to transform. -- Lillian Posner * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Playful and allusive, with bursts of fantasy and nightmare, in the tradition of magic realism. -- Luke Harding * The Guardian *
Awards
Winner of Peterson Literary Fund Translated Book Award 2023 (United States).
Book Information
ISBN 9780674271708
Author Volodymyr Rafeyenko
Format Paperback
Page Count 204
Imprint Harvard University Press
Publisher Harvard University Press