Sotnykivna

Bohdan Lepky is second only to Ivan Franko in Ukrainian literature, but we know very little about him. However, the writer's creative work includes poems, plays, stories for children and adults, short stories and novels. His historical novels, often about little-known pages of the Ukrainian past, deserve special attention. In them, Lepky reveals real historical figures in a new way, rethinks their choices and actions, tries to understand the subtle psychology and feel the breath of the time he is writing about. The novel "Vadim" is imbued with the spirit of princely Kyiv, religious duality. On the other hand, the heroes of "The Centurion" are firm in their views and actions, only the circumstances known to us from textbooks as the beginning of the Age of Ruin are shaky here. Different times and different battles were described by the author with equally unsurpassed skill, all that remains is to read and inhale the smells of incense and gunpowder.