The Buried Book That Helped Ukraine’s Literary Revival
To keep it from Russian forces, a writer hid his last manuscript under a cherry tree. Its rediscovery became part of a flowering of interest in Ukrainian literature.
After Russian forces took control of his village in 2022, Volodymyr Vakulenko, a well-known Ukrainian author, sensed he might soon be arrested. So he buried his new handwritten manuscript in his backyard, under a cherry tree...
Soon enough, Russian soldiers indeed arrested Vakulenko, and his body later turned up in a mass grave. Six months later, a fellow Ukrainian author, Viktoria Amelina, learned of the buried book, dug it up, wrote a foreword and sent it to a publisher. But she too was killed, in a missile strike on a pizza restaurant. In May, in a final blow, Russian missiles blew up the printing plant in Kharkiv, Ukraine, that had published the work. That strike killed seven employees, wounded 22 others and took out about a third of Ukraine’s overall book-printing capacity.
Despite the anguish that accompanied it, the book, “I Transform: A Diary of Occupation and Selected Poems,” ended up on shelves of Ukrainian bookstores and is on sale today. Rescued from the dirt, the book stands as a symbol of an enduring Ukrainian literary life even as Russian forces try to snuff it out.
For the whole article:
www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/world/europe/ukraine-publishing-buried-book.html
https://artdaily.com/news/172338/The-buried-book-that-helped-Ukraine-s-literary-revival