Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan

Set in Lugansk, Ukraine. Reviewed on 2017/11: https://www.instagram.com/p/BblEpWgncsx/

I joked with a friend of mine the other about this book. I told him: nothing gets you in the mood of a brutal NYC winter like reading 400 pages of the #ukrainian void. His answer was: at least you have an option to just read something else. That’s the thing with the characters in #voroshilovgrad they don’t have another option. They happened to have been born in one of the most fought over, invaded, bombarded and abused areas in the world. Despite all that, #zhadan gives his characters a particular sense of yearning and of humanity which sheds some special light on what makes us humans: screwing up, not having the right answer, getting it wrong over and over again. One corrupt system substitutes an equally corrupt one and the characters end up replicating the same violence onto each other. In the midst of all this insanity, Zhadan gives us the perfect dose of sarcasm and wit to at least manage to live through it until the next regime changes the #cityname once again. #masterpiece #highlyrecommended#magnumopus #luhansk #lugansk#ukrainianliterature #serhiyzhadan#луганськ #easternukraine #georgian#ворошиловград #жадан #сергійжадан#kharkiv #харків #deepvellum