Dr. Leonardo’s Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with His Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta. How the Story is Built. Selected Poems

Maik Yohansen is a Ukrainian avant-garde writer. At one time, he admitted to readers that he never stopped short of breaking another tradition. This determined the style of his work — to break the rules and create new poetics from their fragments.

In this book, you will find the works that have become Johansen's signature - the ironic, parodic novel "Dr. Leonardo’s Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with His Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta," the essential text for understanding the author's creative approach, "How a Story is Built" and selected poems.

These are the texts of a genuine literary experimenter. Its purpose is to shake up our ideas about what literature should be, and, on the one hand, to immerse the reader in the artistic game, and on the other hand, to show what aesthetic pleasure can be obtained from these experiments.

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.