Garden of Gethsemane

"It is better to break the ribs of a hundred innocents than to let one guilty one pass" - this was the slogan of the era in which millions of Ukrainians lived in the 1930s, and it is this tragic experience that Ivan Bahrianyi depicts in his novel "Garden of Gethsemane." Using the example of the life of Andrii Chumak, the author demonstrates in detail how the perfect repressive mechanism of the Soviet system worked and how this system enslaved and destroyed people regardless of their achievements, origin, age, or gender.

A doctor, a poet, a gymnasium director - in prison, your past doesn't matter: no matter what you've achieved, you still find yourself at the very bottom. But despite all these horrors, Ivan Bahrianyi is convinced that resistance to evil is necessary even when it seems there is no point in fighting further. The final choice always depends on the person.

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.