THE NEW BOOK BY SERHIJ ZHADAN
For readers with heart and mind who have little time. Just like the people in Ukraine
Easter reading
Today, on Green Thursday, you will probably have already finished reading various recipes and decided which fish you will enjoy, whether you want lamb or a vegan dish to celebrate Easter.
We therefore recommend reading the new book by author Serhij Zhadan, who was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche in 2022.
It won’t take you long to read, as the 165 pages can be read in no time at all. So there’s plenty of time for all the activities planned for the Easter holidays.
Serhij Zhadan, now a volunteer soldier in the 13th Brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard, describes daily life in Ukraine in very reduced language. They are sketchy short stories.
Unexcited
Serhij Zhadan’s language has changed. It is now brittle, unemotional, straightforward and focused on the essentials. The language suits what he describes: People in Ukraine are threatened by deadly Russian weapons at any time and in any place: in the restaurant in Dnipro, on the playground in Krimi Rih, on the way to church, as on Palm Sunday last year in the Ukrainian town of Sumy.
There is no time for lyrical paraphrases. Language concentrates on the essentials in the dialog between people who have no time to waste in the “everyday life of war”. They talk about funerals, weddings, the hospital and children who have become orphans. The few words they use are enough to understand everything, even what is not said.
Sketchy drawings illustrate the book.
A book about people for people
It is incredibly exciting to follow the people in the book. We read the unadorned, seemingly umemotional language with which their lives in complete defencelessness become comprehensible, but we do not become voyeurs but empathetic fellow human beings.
Suhrkamp Verlag published the German translation of the book on March 17, 2025. Exactly 17 days after the humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selensky in the Oval Office of the White House of the United States of America.
This staging, which was cheered in the Kremlin, lacked any human empathy for the suffering of the population in Ukraine. There is no need to join this contempt for humanity. You can do the opposite and read this book, for example.
It prevents you from blocking out the daily news from Ukraine and from staying awake and active, as all people in Ukraine inevitably have to do. Regardless of whether you were a child in 1945, the year of the war, and now have to experience the next war in Ukraine, or whether you are experiencing your childhood in 2025, the year of the war: “Very young. Very poor… mischievous, haunting children’s eyes… They look into the future, see something. Something you can’t see unless you put yourself in their place. Something long and complicated, full of pain, full of joy”.
More direct than any interview
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine on March 22, 2025, Serhij Zhadan answered the question of why he no longer travels to Germany to campaign for support for Ukraine, as he did in the past: “It is difficult to explain to a public looking at a burning house why the people inside need to be saved.”
The Berliner Tagesspiegel writes about this book: “Anyone who has read even one of these stories will not forget them in a hurry.”
Photographs © GloriousMe 2025
