The Last Edgewood. 1920s Fantasy

In the new anthology of fantasy from the 1920s, the reader will see two novels by two “patriarchs” of 20th-century Ukrainian literature. Yuriy Smolych gave the world his first novel, “The Last Edgewood” (1926), at the age of twenty-six. It deals with serious matters – the global labor movement, strikes in America and here, the unification of Soviet communists with American ones, and, of course, a deadly threat to humanity that can only be averted by the main characters, united by love. In Volodymyr Vladek’s novel “Aerotorpedoes Return” (1934), the conflict is just as global – a world war is looming and unfolding, on the sides of which it is easy to recognize the pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet blocs. Who will win is obvious, but this is far from the most important thing, as is often the case in fantasy novels.