Results by title
3 books match the query 'Naydan, Michael M.'
A Land the Size of Binoculars
Igor Klekh
Northwestern University Press, 2004
Igor Klekh emerges as a writer from the crossroads of Europe—Western Ukraine—influenced by the great Russian literary tradition as well as the languages and dialects of both East-Central Europe and his native country. A Land the Size of Binoculars collects his breakthrough 1993 novella Kallimakh's Wake, five short pieces, and two more recent novellas.
Throughout, Klekh studies landscapes as intimate as the terrain between fathers and sons and as broad as the wild, mysterious Carpathian Mountains. His work has been compared to that of Borges, Eco, and the magical realists, and celebrated for its synthesis of numerous literary traditions, its use of esoteric knowledge, and its breathtaking prose.
Throughout, Klekh studies landscapes as intimate as the terrain between fathers and sons and as broad as the wild, mysterious Carpathian Mountains. His work has been compared to that of Borges, Eco, and the magical realists, and celebrated for its synthesis of numerous literary traditions, its use of esoteric knowledge, and its breathtaking prose.
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Perverzion
Yuri Andrukhovych
Northwestern University Press, 2005
What was the fate of Stanislav Perfetsky—poet, provocateur, and hero of Ukrainian underground culture? Evidence points to suicide. But some whisper murder. Some suggest the grand Eastern European tradition of coerced suicide. It may even be related to the religious cult ceremony he happened upon in Munich . . . or that job as a dancer in a strip club for older women.
Or, then again, it may not.
Perverzion constructs Perfetsky's final days using a mishmash of relics, from official documents to recorded interviews to scraps of paper. Perfetsky, the personification of the Ukrainian artistic superman—he used his masterful musicianship in a collaboration with Elton John during the pop star's secret sojourn in Ukraine—is bound for Venice to participate in a seminar to save the world from absurdity. On the way he becomes a Ukrainian Orpheus descending into the decadence of the West, navigating through surrealistic adventures and no less surrealistic seminar topics as he charges head up (and pants down) toward his fate.
Or, then again, it may not.
Perverzion constructs Perfetsky's final days using a mishmash of relics, from official documents to recorded interviews to scraps of paper. Perfetsky, the personification of the Ukrainian artistic superman—he used his masterful musicianship in a collaboration with Elton John during the pop star's secret sojourn in Ukraine—is bound for Venice to participate in a seminar to save the world from absurdity. On the way he becomes a Ukrainian Orpheus descending into the decadence of the West, navigating through surrealistic adventures and no less surrealistic seminar topics as he charges head up (and pants down) toward his fate.
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The Essential Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych
Ecstasies and ElegiesBohdan Ihor Antonych (1909-1937)
Bucknell University Press, 2024
Lemko-Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909-37) is not as well-known as Slavic modernist poets Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Milosz, or their Western European counterparts Eliot, Rilke, and Lorca, but he unquestionably should be. Sometimes compared to Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, Antonych, who described himself as “an ecstatic pagan, a poet of the high of spring,” created during his brief lifetime powerful and innovative poetry with astonishing metaphorical constructions. Born in the Lemko region of Poland, Antonych adopted Ukrainian as his literary language when he moved to Lviv, and virtually transformed the Ukrainian poetic landscape. This essential collection introduces Antonych’s work to new audiences, and includes a biographical sketch by the translator and a comprehensive introduction by Lidia Stefanowska, one of the world’s leading experts on this remarkable poet.
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