Our Europe

What to do when the old world order is destroyed, and power becomes more important than international law? How to find landmarks and not get lost in the new reality? And what will it be, this new reality? The answers to these questions are in Oksana Zabuzhko's new book.

"Our Europe" is a collection of essays written mainly after 2022 and united by the theme of Europe, its unlearned lessons of the 20th century and its future. The texts of various genres are composed into a multifaceted dialogue between the writer and Europe, an ally for us, and the heroes-interlocutors in it are writers (Paul Celan, Alain Polz, Milan Kundera, Czesław Milosz...) and modern politicians, a Paderborn taxi driver and a Warsaw street.

In the interplay of ideas and impressions, the meaning of the era we are experiencing gradually becomes visible: it is a change in the historical cycle, the end of the era of empires-superpowers ("Khmelnytsky's project") and the formation of a new security belt in Europe with Ukraine at its core ("Mazepa's project").