Olena Pchilka's novellas are beautiful sketches of the lives of Ukrainian wealthy families, the capital's and province's elite, and the way of life established in estates and manors at the end of the nineteenth century.
Visits, balls, concerts, and club meetings were often intended to organize a successful marriage for girls, but at the same time, they supported the national tradition, the spread of Ukrainian ideas, and the emergence of women's university education. For example, we are talking about the first Ukrainian women who sat down at the student's bench next to their peers and studied medicine in Switzerland.
In her urban stories, Olena Pchilka breaks down stereotypes with incredible brilliance, sometimes reducing pathos, sometimes demonstrating the duality of standards, and also looking for deep psychological motivations for the characters' actions.
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. However, 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 Pidmohylny and Barhyany to Khvylovy and Johansen, from an elegant intellectual novel to a dynamic adventure, 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.
