What Readers Bought in September: Knyzhkovyi Lev’s Top 10 Books
September’s bestseller list at Knyzhkovyi Lev had a distinctly Ukrainian character. Sofiia Yablonska took both first and ninth place, while two brand-new Meridian Czernowitz releases entered the Top 10 alongside Mexican, Chilean and Italian classics.
What stands out most is the appetite for rediscovery: books by Yablonska, Juan Rulfo and Luigi Pirandello are selling next to some of the newest Ukrainian releases.
1. Far Horizons — Sofiia Yablonska
September’s number-one book is Yablonska’s travel writing about her journey around the world in 1934–1935.
China, Bali, Java and New Zealand appear through the eyes of a Ukrainian writer, photographer and traveller who was interested less in conventional sightseeing than in everyday lives and unfamiliar cultures. The book was first published in Lviv in 1939; a new Ukrainian edition appeared in Vikhola’s Non-Canonical Canon series in 2026.
2. We Weren’t Expecting You — Artem Chekh
One of September’s major Ukrainian releases entered the chart at number two.
Artist Ivan Trush survives a battle in eastern Ukraine in which the rest of his unit is killed. When he wakes in hospital, he discovers that he has officially been declared dead — and decides not to correct the mistake.
Meridian Czernowitz describes the novel as a story about loneliness, memory, art and people searching for love.
3. Pedro Páramo — Juan Rulfo
From eighth place in August to third in September.
Rulfo’s short Mexican classic follows a man travelling to the town of Comala in search of his father. What begins as a journey gradually becomes a chorus of memories, ghosts and voices from the past.
It is one of the most concise and powerful ways into twentieth-century Latin American literature.
4. The Savage Detectives — Roberto Bolaño
A completely different Latin American experience.
Bolaño’s large, polyphonic novel follows young poets, literary movements, journeys and disappearances across Mexico and beyond.
For readers who know Latin American literature mainly through magical realism, The Savage Detectives offers another world entirely: urban, restless, literary and postmodern.
5. Mykoltsio’s Happiness — Myroslava Kyrylchuk
The novel follows Mykoltsio’s search for prosperity and respect against the background of Soviet occupation, collectivisation and the Ukrainian underground resistance.
It is historical fiction focused not on abstract events but on ordinary people forced to make personal choices inside them.
6. Hymns of Baroque Wars — Serhiy Zhadan
Zhadan’s new book combines poetry, prose and his own artwork created over the past two years.
Its themes include war, home, solitude, love, freedom and the everyday lives of people who continue working, raising children and defending what is theirs. The collection is structured with the logic of a Baroque musical composition.
7. Sex Is a Gift from God — Pani Lan
Four consecutive months in Knyzhkovyi Lev’s Top 10.
The book ranked ninth in June, second in July, fourth in August and seventh in September.
It is an explicit 18+ autobiographical text about sexuality, desire, shame and personal experience — deliberately messy, provocative and highly personal.
8. One, No One and One Hundred Thousand — Luigi Pirandello
One of September’s most significant translated releases.
A seemingly trivial comment about the shape of Vitangelo Moscarda’s nose makes him realise that other people see a completely different person from the one he sees in himself.
The result is a novel about identity and the unsettling idea that there may be as many versions of us as there are people who know us.
The 2026 Babylon Library edition, translated by Taras Lazer, is the first Ukrainian translation of the novel and marks its centenary.
9. From the Land of Rice and Opium — Sofiia Yablonska
A second Yablonska title in the same monthly Top 10.
Written during her time in China and Indochina in the 1930s, the book combines travel writing, observation and her experience working with photography and film.
Having two Yablonska books in one bestseller list may be September’s clearest reading trend.
10. 1913: The Year Before the Storm — Florian Illies
A third consecutive month in the Top 10.
Illies reconstructs Europe’s final peaceful year before the First World War through short scenes featuring Kafka, Freud, Proust, Stravinsky, Malevich, Thomas Mann and many others.
The Ukrainian edition was published by Laboratory in 2026, translated by Tetiana Taranukha.
