But dishes such as pickled aubergines with mint and chilli, courgettes with herbaceous dressing and steamed bilberry doughnuts should please most palates. Vegetarian readers may bristle at some of the offerings: pig’s ears with garlic and paprika make an appearance. Ms Hercules intersperses her recollections of summer kitchens with modern versions of traditional recipes. These small outhouses were common in rural areas, serving as places to prepare summertime meals from homegrown produce and to embark on the near-industrial scale project of pickling vegetables for winter. Olia Hercules highlights the diversity of Ukrainian cuisine using a particular prism: the country’s “summer kitchens”. But its own culinary culture is less commonly celebrated. Ukraine is an important exporter of grain and other staples for the global food market. Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences from Every Corner of Ukraine. Ukrainian musicians have a stark message for the Kremlin.The race to digitally preserve Ukraine’s buildings and monuments.Readers who prefer earlier literature may wish to try the works of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet, or Lesia Ukrainka, a notable modernist writer and feminist thinker. But the novel provides a rare insight into this crucial yet often misunderstood region, currently the focus of Russia’s invasion. The text’s descriptions of everyday violence are not for the faint of heart. Combining social and magical realism, the novel follows a political analyst from Kharkiv who travels back to his hometown of Luhansk (previously known as Voroshilovgrad) to help his brother, before falling into a web of mystery and crime. Mr Zhadan’s “Voroshilovgrad”, published in 2010, describes pre-war life in his native Donbas. Another especially interesting Ukrainian writer is Serhiy Zhadan, a poet, novelist and ska musician.
Deep Vellum Publishing 400 pages $15.99 and £11.99Ĭontemporary Ukrainian literature boasts several leading lights, including Oksana Zabuzhko and Andrey Kurkov (who recently wrote three essays for our sister publication, 1843, about the start of the war, his escape from Kyiv and Ukraine’s refugees). Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler. But the strength of her work lies in the subtle descriptions of ordinary people going about their lives through Ukraine’s often chaotic recent history. The author explores both the roots of Russia’s aggression and its ramifications for Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Major historical events marked this decade, including the Maidan revolution in 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in the Donbas. Ms Pinkham spent ten years living in both Ukraine and Russia, having first travelled to the ex-Soviet region as a volunteer for the Red Cross in Siberia. Sophie Pinkham provides a very different form of travelogue in her reflective and humorous memoir about modern Ukrainian life. The besieged eastern cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro and Donetsk have remarkable histories, but face uncertain futures.īlack Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine. But the evocations of places made newly familiar by Russia’s invasion are especially poignant.
The descriptions of Kyiv’s ancient metropolis, Lviv’s central European architecture and Odessa’s Jewish history are fascinating. Karl Schlögel’s study explores these urban histories by providing “portraits” of eight Ukrainian cities. Even their names reflect the external forces that have shaped the country: the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, for example, has at various points been referred to as Lvov (in Russian), Lwow (in Polish) and Lemberg (in German). Ukraine’s complicated history is expressed through its cities.