Forgottenness

Maljartschuk’s resonant English-language debut takes the form of a contemporary Ukrainian writer’s biographical sketch of a 20th-century Ukrainian nationalist. The unnamed narrator, beset by panic attacks and preoccupied with her mortality (“It always seems as though I’ve lived interminably long and that the end should be arriving at any moment”) takes solace in reading old newspapers, where the “fragility of human life” is preserved. One day, she stumbles across a 1931 headline announcing the death of Viacheslav Lypynskyi. Born in Poland, Lypynskyi was a historian and politician who tirelessly advocated for Ukrainian independence. Though little else links them besides sharing a birthday 100 years apart, the narrator compulsively attempts to braid their stories together: “Our lives were too disparate to comfortably fit into a shared narrative, if not for my irrational stubbornness.” The dual portrait shines when the narrator focuses on Lypynskyi’s intellectual and political journey, as well as his health woes (“Tuberculosis was the favorite illness of the Ukrainian intelligentsia”). She also offers an engrossing summary of an early 20th-century “stateless Ukrainian society,” which was divided between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Throughout, Maljartschuk fruitfully explores themes of erasure and remembrance to meditate on what survives the onslaught of time. Fans of postmodern European literature ought to check this out. (Jan.)