"You speak Ukrainian so well - you must be from Lviv?" – the main character of Nina Kuriat's debut novel "Dzvinka" will hear this phrase many times. And he will constantly overcome other people's stereotypes about himself and his compatriots from the Ukrainian South.
This book is about what it is like to be born Ukrainian in the USSR, to experience Soviet propaganda and language discrimination first, and then the prejudice of compatriots from other regions. Family helps Dzvinka to create and maintain her own identity - it is family stories and family upbringing that sow seeds of doubt in her about whether to believe what is said at school, written in newspapers, and "lies" on TV.
The childhood of the main character falls on the days of late Brezhnev and the beginning of "Perestroika", youth - on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the infamous 90s, and adulthood - on the final establishment of Independence. Having moved to Odesa, Dzvinka has to defend her otherness in a crowded environment, and later in Kyiv and in the West of Ukraine she has to prove that she is the same Ukrainian as those who were born on the other side of Zbruch, her native language is Ukrainian, and Ukrainians live in Odesa.
The heroes of the book speak Ukrainian and russian, Podil and Galician dialects - and, of course, Surzhyk. There are such words as "klubnika", "pomydora", "gabli", "caliafior" and "spizharka". Everything, as in our life, is as rich in unforeseen circumstances as various cultural codes.
Why should you read the book?
A fictional novel by a journalist and writer about how the issues of the Ukrainian language and identity have been distorted in our society since Soviet times and up to today.
Skillfully and ironically in relation to the realities of the Soviet era, reproduces the Ukrainian-russian language collisions in Ukraine.
About the author:
Nina Kuriata is a Ukrainian journalist and writer. The author of three poetry collections. Today she works as a media trainer and media expert.
