BOOK NOTES

Andrukhovych's philosophical novel now available in English translation

"Perverzion," by Yuri Andrukhovych. Translated into English by Michael Naydan. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005. 326 pp.

Leading Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych's post-modernist philosophical novel "Perverzion" has recently appeared in Michael M. Naydan's English translation, as a publication of Northwestern University Press.

The novel appears in Northwestern's "Writings from an Unbound Europe" series that previously had published Halyna Hryn's translation of Ukrainian author Volodymyr Dibrova under the title "Peltse and Pentameron." Besides the English translation of Mr. Andrukhovych's third novel, the 326-page volume includes a six-page introduction by Prof. Naydan that discusses Mr. Andrukhovych's place in the context of Ukrainian and world literature as well as 11 pages of notes that deal with the numerous complexities and myriad allusions in the novel.

As noted by Prof. Naydan, "Perverzion" is considered by many to be Mr. Andrukhovych's most impressive literary work. Following a brief whirlwind visit to Venice, the author took three years to research and write his novel. It is an extraordinarily imaginative work that from various versions pieces together the life and adventures of Ukrainian poet Stanislav Perfetsky, who mysteriously disappears in Venice in March 1993 during a conference he attends titled "'The Post-Carnival Absurdity of the World: What is on the Horizon?'"

The novel creates a marvelous, intimate, tragicomic portrait of Stakh Perfetsky, who is on a journey of self-discovery as he travels from Lviv, to Munich, and finally to Venice, the birthplace of carnival.

For much of his journey he is accompanied by Ada Zitrone, who ultimately rejects her role as a spy sent to report on his activities. Instead, she falls in love and protects him from forces out to destroy him.

The conference, in fact, turns out to be a conclave of demonic forces on a mission to recruit new followers. Does Stakh Perfetsky commit suicide in the dark waters of the Grand Canal? Is he coerced into suicide by his mysterious persecutors? Or does he feign his suicide in order to escape from his enemies hell bent on destroying him? Mr. Andrukhovych leaves that conclusion up to the reader, who is privy to the various versions and perversions of Perfetsky's last days before he disappears.

Prof. Naydan contends that Mr. Andrukhovych's inventive use of language, style and parody makes him a great innovator in the manner of a James Joyce or a Mykola Hohol. That very focus on linguistic play also makes him extraordinarily difficult to translate. According to Prof. Naydan, the journey through "Perverzion" should be an entertaining read and allows those who do not read Ukrainian to become acquainted with one of Ukraine's truly great contemporary writers in English translation.

The book may be purchased at the Northwestern University Press website, http://nupress.northwestern.edu/mac_index.cfm, or through Internet booksellers such as www.amazon.com. (note: When searching for the book online in English, don't forget to spell "Perverzion" with a "z").

Price: paperback, $25.95; hardback, $69.95.

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Born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, where he currently resides, Mr. Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine's leading writers of today. He is the patriarch of the Bu-Ba-Bu literary performance group (along with Viktor Neborak and Oleksander Irvanets) that spearheaded the renaissance of Ukrainian literary culture in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.

Mr. Andrukhovych's literary training includes a doctoral degree in Ukrainian philology from the Zakarpattia University in Ivano-Frankivsk, where he wrote his dissertation on the Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych. His first prose works were realistic short stories based on his experiences as a conscript in the Soviet army during the Afghan war.

Mr. Andrukhovych is best known as a prose writer and has authored four novels: "Recreations" (1992), "The Moscoviad" (1993), "Perverzion" (1996), and most recently, "The Twelve Rings" (2003). "Recreations" is available in Mark Pavlyshyn's translation published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.

Mr. Andrukhovych also has published four collections of poetry: "The Sky and City Squares" (1985), "The Center of the City" (1989), "Exotic Birds and Plants" (1991) and "Exotic Birds and Plants with an Addendum 'India'"(1997).

He has also made a particularly strong contribution to Ukrainian literary culture as an essayist. Besides scores of individual essays both in the Ukrainian and foreign periodical press, he has gathered a number of his essays in collections under the titles "Disorientation in Locality" (1999) and, jointly with Andrzej Stasiuk, "My Europe: Two Essays on the Place Called Central Europe" (2000).

Mr. Andrukhovych is also an accomplished translator who has translated Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the Beat poets and the New York School American poets into Ukrainian.

In 2001 he received the Herder Prize in literature, as well as the Antonovych Prize. This year he was the recipient of the Erich Maria Remarque Prize for his essays.

Mr. Andrukhovych, like a number of leading Ukrainian writers, was heavily involved in support of the Orange Revolution and published extensively on the topic of freedom and democracy in Ukraine. Shortly before the final round of the election, he traveled to Strasbourg to give an invited speech to the European Parliament on the cultural and political implications of the upcoming election.

Mr. Andrukhovych's works have been translated into a number of languages, including Bulgarian, English, Finnish, French, German, Polish and Russian. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Pennsylvania State University and extensively toured North America with a reading tour in 2001. He recently just accepted a one-year position as a writer-in-residence in Berlin.

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Michael M. Naydan received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from American University, and his Ph.D. in Slavic literature from Columbia University. He taught at Columbia, Yale and Rutgers universities before coming to The Pennsylvania State University in 1988, where he is professor of Slavic languages and literatures.

Prof. Naydan has published numerous articles and book reviews on literary topics, as well as numerous translations from Ukrainian, Russian and Romanian in such journals as Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Agni, Slavic and East European Journal, and Suchasnist.

His books include "The Poetry of Lina Kostenko: Wanderings of the Heart" (Garland Publishers, 1990); Marina Tsevaeva's "After Russia" (Ardis Publishers, 1992); "Windows of Time Frozen and Other Stories by 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry" (Litopys Publishers, 2000); a translation of Yuri Vynnychuk's short stories, "Windows of Time Frozen and Other Stories" (Klasyka Publishers, 2000); "The Complete Early Poetry Collections of Pavlo Tychyna" (Litopys Publishers, 2000); and a translation of Russian writer Igor Klekh's prose on Ukrainian themes, "A Country the Size of Binoculars" (Northwestern University Press, 2003).

Prof. Naydan's translations of poems by Halyna Petrosanyak are about to appear in Artful Dodge; a feature article on Bu-Ba-Bu and its impact on Ukrainian culture will appear in the September issue of World Literature Today.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 26, 2005, No. 26, Vol. LXXIII

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