Publishers Weekly
11/27/2023
Journalist Chapeye’s gritty and perceptive debut collection gathers fiction and essays written from 2010 to 2018 to portray everyday life in Ukraine. The atmospheric opener, “Pan Ivan and the Three Bears,” follows a group of adventurous hunters through the frigid Sheshul Mountains. A stranger invites them to his cabin, where he recites three epic tales about man versus wild beasts. The broken family in the heart-wrenching “Sonny, Please...” struggles to survive in Kyiv amid poverty and strife between a grandmother and her alcoholic grandson. The nonfiction entry “Marmalade” describes an illegal excursion to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where “self-settlers” have chosen to call the forbidden irradiated landscape home. Chapeye, who has since enlisted in the Ukraine armed forces and wrote the book’s introduction from the front lines of the war against Russia, remarks that his entire family now lives in a tent city after evacuating Kyiv. Embedded within each character-driven piece is evidence of the passion, solidarity, and resilience of Ukrainian people. Chapeye’s grim stories resonate. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
"The characters in The Ukraine, a collection of stories by Artem Chapeye, are tough, brave, funny, wounded people who find fellowship even though they’re not often looking for it. . . . The beauty of [the book] rests foremost in its ability to transcend the narrative that history has forcibly imposed on it." —The Washington Post
"A refreshingly frank portrait of his native country"—The Irish Times
"What the book does . . . is rally against viewing Ukrainians as simply numbers, fleeting headlines, or statistics on a screen – something that is needed more than ever. The Ukraine reminds the reader that behind every Ukrainian is a story." —The Kyiv Independent
"Artem Chapeye shares with us a brilliant screenshot of Ukrainian life. This prose deserves all our attention." —Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv
"The Ukraine is a startling and genuinely delightful set of stories from a writer now serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Artem Chapeye writes with warmth and brilliance, giving us ‘the Ukraine’ that in all its complexity, comedy, and beauty the author is now fighting to defend." —Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries
"The Ukraine—with the definite article—becomes code for the gritty reality of the country. At the same time, the [title] story is a kind of love letter to that gritty reality." —The New Yorker
"Chapeye represents a modern-day Ukrainian counterpart to classic American writers like Mark Twain or O. Henry, capturing the dignity and respect his characters might not get but nonetheless long for and deserve. . . . Chapeye’s portrayals elevate and honor the seemingly mundane. His sheer perceptiveness renders each story deeply resonant." —Kate Tsurkan, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Candid, darkly funny observations." —Ella Creamer, The Guardian
"In his remarkable collection of stories . . . [Chapeye] offers a refreshingly frank portrait of his native country. . . . Chapeye’s faith in the reader’s intelligence is matched by his deep empathy for his fellow citizens as they struggle with the unheroic task of making ends meet." —Michael Cronin, The Irish Times
*"[A] powerful collection . . . an expansive, absorbing portrait of an imperfect land that’s worth cherishing for its complexity and contradictions. The Ukraine is a deft, humane, and empathetic text that contemplates a nation’s ever-shifting fortunes." —Foreword, starred review
"A unique vision of Ukraine, with and without the "the," Artem Chapeye's book is also a tender and melancholic confession of love, to a beloved and to a homeland by turns, a confession made all the more poignant by the premonition of death." —Liliana Corobca, author of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize winner The Censor's Notebook and, forthcoming, Kinderland
"Journalist Chapeye’s gritty and perceptive debut collection gathers fiction and essays written from 2010 to 2018 to portray everyday life in Ukraine. The atmospheric opener, “Pan Ivan and the Three Bears,” follows a group of adventurous hunters through the frigid Sheshul Mountains. A stranger invites them to his cabin, where he recites three epic tales about man versus wild beasts. The broken family in the heart-wrenching “Sonny, Please...” struggles to survive in Kyiv amid poverty and strife between a grandmother and her alcoholic grandson. The nonfiction entry “Marmalade” describes an illegal excursion to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where “self-settlers” have chosen to call the forbidden irradiated landscape home. Chapeye, who has since enlisted in the Ukraine Armed Forces and wrote the book’s introduction from the front lines of the war against Russia, remarks that his entire family now lives in a tent city after evacuating Kyiv. Embedded within each character-driven piece is evidence of the passion, solidarity, and resilience of Ukrainian people. Chapeye’s grim stories resonate." —Publishers Weekly
