Heaven

Vasyl Barka, real name Vasyl Kostiantynovych Ocheret (1908–2003) is one of the outstanding Ukrainian writers of the 20th century, a poet and novelist. Already in his first poems, he declared himself as a “foreign body” that the system tried to push out (and did push out!) from the “communist paradise”. These events were described by V. Barka in his first novel “Heaven”, published in 1953 in New York. It is based on the author’s own autobiographical memories. The main character of the novel is Anton Nykandrovych Spodaneiko, a professor of Slavic philology, whose values ​​and thoughts are close to the writer. By telling about only two days in the life of ordinary Ukrainians (June 20 and 21, 1941) under the Stalinist regime, V. Barka refutes the myth of it as an earthly paradise. The Folio publishing house also published the writer’s novel “The Yellow Prince”.