My Final Territory: Selected Essays

by Yuri Andrukhovych, Mark Andryczyk (Translator), Michael Naydan (Translator)

Overview

Yuri Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine’s preeminent authors and cultural commentators. In recognition of his literary writings and his role as a public intellectual he has received numerous awards including the Herder Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Goethe Medal.

My Final Territory is a collection of Andrukhovych’s philosophical, autobiographical, political, and literary essays, demonstrating his enormous talent as an essayist to the English-speaking world. This volume broadens Andrukhovych’s international audience and will create a dialogue with anglophone readers throughout the world in a number of fields including philosophy, history, journalism, political science, sociology, and anthropology. In their introduction, Mark Andryczyk and Michael M. Naydan reveal a somewhat lesser-known side of Andrukhovych’s writings that places him alongside such writers as recent Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich.

Eleven of the fourteen essays in this volume, including his seminal work "Central-Eastern Revision" and a brand-new essay on the Russo-Ukrainian War, appear here for the first time in English. My Final Territory showcases Yuri Andrukhovych’s unique voice and provides insight into the Ukrainian experience of nationality and identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487550813
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Yuri Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine’s preeminent authors and cultural commentators.
Mark Andryczyk obtained his PhD in Ukrainian Language and Literature from the University of Toronto.
Michael M. Naydan is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

A Biographical Preface about the Author
Michael M. Naydan

En Route Endeavours
Mark Andryczyk

Author’s Introduction
Yuri Andrukhovych

Autobiographical Essay:

The Central-Eastern Revision (expanded version 2005)

Culturological and Political Essays: 

Erz-Herz-Perz (1994)
The City-Ship (1994)
Carpathologia Comosphilica (1996)
Time and Place, or My Final Territory (1999)
A Little Bit of Urban Studies (1999)
What Language Are You From: A Ukrainian Writer among the Temptations of Temporariness (2002)
Meeting Place Germaschka (2002)
Four Million for Our Agents (2003)
A Land of Dreams (2004)
The Star Absinthe: Notes on a Bitter Anniversary (2011)
Love and Hatred in Kyiv (January 2014)
Seven Hundred Fierce Days, or the Role of a Contrabass in the Revolution (March 2014)

Afterword
Yuri Andrukhovych

Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Myroslav Shkandrij

"Combining playful memoir writing, history, fiction, and travelogue, My Final Territory gathers Andrukhovych's best essays from 1996 to 2011, highlighting his views of Galicia, Lviv, Kyiv, and attitudes toward Poles, Russians, and the Soviet past. Most importantly, Andrukhovych is concerned with questions of identity, their complexity and the whimsical grounds on which they are constructed. This translation of My Final Territory captures Andrukhovych's 'lightness of touch' admirably. The English-language reader learns much about Ukraine that will be novel, eye-opening, and inspiring. This is the most valuable achievement of the collection. It allows the reader to hear and see from the perspective of an outstanding contemporary Ukrainian writer and intellectual who engages with the opinions about his country held by others."

Editorial Reviews

"We should feel grateful to the translators for making Andrukhovych's incisive essays available, for the first time and in one place, to English-speaking audiences."

Slavic Review - Alexander Burak

"Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine's most prominent intellectuals, perhaps the very symbol of the rise of Ukrainian postmodernism in the early 1990s."

New Zealand Slavonic Journal - Alessandro Achilli

"We should feel grateful to the translators for making Andrukhovych’s incisive essays available, for the first time and in one place, to English-speaking audiences."

—Alexander Burak, University of Florida, Slavic Review

"Combining playful memoir writing, history, fiction, and travelogue, My Final Territory gathers Andrukhovych’s best essays from 1996 to 2011, highlighting his views of Galicia, Lviv, Kyiv, and attitudes toward Poles, Russians, and the Soviet past. Most importantly, Andrukhovych is concerned with questions of identity, their complexity and the whimsical grounds on which they are constructed. This translation of My Final Territory captures Andrukhovych’s ‘lightness of touch’ admirably. The English-language reader learns much about Ukraine that will be novel, eye-opening, and inspiring. This is the most valuable achievement of the collection. It allows the reader to hear and see from the perspective of an outstanding contemporary Ukrainian writer and intellectual who engages with the opinions about his country held by others."

—Myroslav Shkandrij, Department of Slavic Studies, University of Manitoba

From the Publisher