Close people. Halyna Pahutiak

"Close People" is a novel-confession, a novel-despair, a novel-farewell about those who are cramped not only in their homes, but also in their own souls.

Petro Mudrak - an old Greek Catholic priest - is living out his last days in the parish in Urizh. He is no longer expected in church. He is not heard in the village. Ahead is a move, or rather, exile after the Inquisition, to his daughter in Holdovychi.

But before that, he must confess. To himself. To remember how he buried the dead, suicides, his own children and serfs. How he renounced the fight against vampires, but used the Gospel to tell fortunes. How he looked for a bride with a special book, and married either out of love or out of pity. And how loneliness hurt him the most. This is the confession not of a saint or a martyr, but of a weary man, caught between church canons and human prejudices, between physical weakness and spiritual responsibility, between temptations and shame.

This book was born from archival research and the desire to give a voice to those who have long been unheard. It is both the story of a 19th-century Galician community and, at the same time, a profound parable about a world in which even faith does not save from loneliness.