To my mind Maria Matios’ Sweet Darusya is the best contemporary Ukrainian novel written since Ukrainian Independence in 1991. It unfolds a family saga that is much more dynamic than classical sagas and at the same time is much more touching and engaging. It is an emotional history of Ukraine with a very well researched and vivid historical background that gives the reader the opportunity to understand not only the characters and their drama, but the entire drama of the country/countries in which they lived without leaving their village.
Andrei Kurkov
Maria Matios with her novel Sweet Darusya has boldly and strongly tossed political caution and public taboos to the wind -- and at her own risk has taken us on a cruel journey into our bloody, and no less cruel, historical hell, into the abyss, where it is terrifying to peer.
Pavlo Zahrebelny
Ecstatic reactions, many awards, and the large number of readers are tied to its vivid, rich, but almost never sweet language, thanks to which the old world of a Ukrainian village blooms and begins a new life.
Uli Hufen, Westdeutscher Rundfunk / Germany
With Sweet Darusya, Maria Matios constructs a refined literary monument to the victims of fickle history.
Gerhard Zellinger, Die Presse / Austria
A disquieting novel.
Lieselotte Stalzer, Buchhandlung beim Augarten
A heartrending, fantastic book from the land next to the Romanian-Ukrainian border.
Dorothea Trottenberg, ekz bibliotheksservice
This is a chronicle of Soviet tyranny in Ukraine.
Vasyl Kapkan, the Lithuanian translator of Sweet Darusya
