A "hive" in an industrial zone. A forty-year-old artist who lives as a hermit in his studio. Models, poets, mistresses. Exhibitions and a creative crisis.
At first glance, it looks like a typical sketch from the life of a provincial bohemian. But what is really going on?
In his new novel, Anatolii Dnistrovyi shows the destruction of the "ivory tower" through the relationships of artists. Since Romantic times, it has personified the mystery of creativity, the artist's self-centeredness, and his or her distancing from society, but in today's accelerated world it has become static, on the periphery, and living out its last days.
Anatolii Dnistrovyi is a writer and artist. He is the author of more than 20 books of poetry, prose, and essays, including the novels Patsyky, Drosophila Over Kant's Volume, B-52, and others.
Recent publications: the book Conversations with Intellectuals (2022), poetry collections Black Friday (2022), Days of Anxiety (2023).
After the full-scale invasion, Anatolii joined the Ukrainian Defense Forces and serves as an officer.
"Gray Peina" is the first text in a trilogy about the fictional Podillia town of Budych.
