my ukraine: 5 posts

My book The Rooster House was selected as “Book of the Week” by BBC Radio 4. In anticipation, my book is featured twice in their latest issue – in their ‘On Our Bookshelf’ section and also in their weekly highlights section. I’m thrilled that my work is recognized this way, and I’m beyond delighted to be on the same page as Hercule Poirot.

Starting today, you can listen to The Rooster House being read by the British-Ukrainian actress Vera Graziadie via https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001p6rk. A new chapter will be aired each day this week. Vera’s reading is masterful and it’s going to be a treat. I hope that you will enjoy it.

You can find the list upcoming broadcasts via BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001p6rk/broadcasts/upcoming

It was a few days before Easter when I arrived in Ukraine in 2014 to stay with my grandmother, Valentina. Taking advantage of being together for the first time in years for this holiday, we prepared a large feast, colored eggs with onion peels and baked paska, a brioche-like Easter bread.  I became obsessed with photographing every part of our preparations, making my grandmother laugh. She didn’t understand what was interesting about recording everything. I didn’t understand it myself at the time, but I felt that I had to capture as many of my impressions as possible. Ukraine was going through a painful period as Russia had annexed Crimea and was also supporting various separatist movements in the eastern part of the country. We lived with the sounds of gunfire from the military training grounds nearby and with bitter news from the front.

Yet, as we celebrated Easter with its powerful message of renewal and rebirth, we felt hopeful. We planted vegetables and flowers in the garden. We whitewashed our cherry trees. We waited for the blossoms to burst.

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For the past few days rescue workers in the town of Dnipro have been searching for survivors of a devastating Russian attack. A missile hit an apartment building, destroying it completely. I spent several summers in Dnipro and I have several friends there, and these news have affected us deeply. Almost a year later and I still haven’t learned to cope with the pain of seeing familiar landmarks scarred by war.

After seeing images of gutted apartment buildings and bombed out streets, I needed to remember Dnipro as a vibrant town in the eastern part of Ukraine. Its name comes from its location on the Dnieper River, and its shores offer beautiful views. I went through my archive of photographs that I took during my travels in Ukraine. It was in Dnipro where I discovered the art of Petro Magro (1918–2010). A native of the region, he captured its landscapes in his impressionistic paintings. I hope that you will enjoy his artwork as much as I did–a reminder of beauty and an antidote to darkness and despair.

Do you have a favorite artist whose works uplift you? 

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The neighborhood where I used to live in Kyiv got bombarded several times over the past couple of days. Now every night I dream of walking through it as it once were. I then wake up in the middle of the night and lie conjuring up the familiar images. Ukraine lives in me, even as I am far away from Ukraine.

I recently gave an interview to a Spanish newspaper ABC about my book The Rooster House (Mi Ucrania in Spanish) and said that to understand Ukraine, it’s important to know that its identity made up of beauty and tragedy. And so I will share this painting by Dmytro Perepelytsya (1903–1981), a Ukrainian artist from Poltava, who captured everyday life in moving, poignant images like these. His Still life with watermelon was painted in 1937, the height of Stalinist terror, but it’s a tender depiction of summer bounty in vivid colors.

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