The novel "The Disease" shows the life of the Kyiv intelligentsia and the artistic circles of the 1920s. The main character of the novel is the director of the plant Ivan Orlovets. His life is perfectly ordered and rational: work, home, family, and ahead is the systematic construction of a "bright post-revolutionary future." However, despite the apparent stability and systematicity, this construction is very shaky.
One evening at the opera, where he is dragged by his friends, he sees the famous singer Iryna Zavadska. This meeting turns the hero's life upside down and poses the question: if the new era is so beautiful, why does a person live a gray, miserable, and unhappy life? In his text, Yevhen Pluzhnyk examines the "disease" of that generation: the gap between ideal and reality. "How can I build something beautiful for everyone, when I don't have the strength or the will to create something at least decent for myself," says the main character.
About the series "Non-canon canon"
Thinking about the canon of Ukrainian literature, only a few names from the school curriculum come to mind: Shevchenko, Franko, and Nechuy-Levytskyi. Although in reality, this list is much more extensive and more diverse.
Before you are the series "Non-canon canon", with the help of which we want to talk about all those we did not know, whose texts we read without understanding the context of the reality of the time. Before you are a series designed to rediscover familiar strangers. You will find a range of Ukrainian authors and their works - from Pidmohylnyi and Barhianyi to Khvylovyi and Johansen, from an elegant intellectual novel to a dynamic adventure, from innovative urban prose to psychological texts.
Keys accompany each text for reading from Ukrainian literary experts. They will tell you what to pay attention to and help you look at the texts of Ukrainian classics in a new way.
