A Guide to Ukrainian Literature
According to Alessandro Achilli
10 Must-Read Books
Each year, at the request of the Ukrainian Institute, leading Ukrainian and international literary scholars and translators compile recommended lists of landmark Ukrainian literary works. These are texts that deserve to be translated into various languages, published abroad, studied in academic research, and read by anyone seeking to discover Ukrainian literature. While some of these works are already available in translation — as noted in the list — the majority remain accessible only in Ukrainian.
This project was launched to raise awareness among both professional and general audiences abroad about the diversity and depth of Ukraine’s literary heritage, and to facilitate the emergence of new translations of Ukrainian classics.
This is the second list prepared by Alessandro Achilli, an Italian literary scholar and theorist, professor of Slavic studies at several prestigious universities, translator, and passionate advocate for Ukrainian literature in Italy and internationally.
The selection includes the following works:
1. Mykhajl Semenko
Selected poetry
While Italian and Russian Futurism are universally read and appreciated, Ukrainian Futurism remains unknown to most poetry lovers. Mykhajl Semenko is the leading name of Ukrainian Futurism. His early poetry combines the style experimentation and the sassy gestures that one would expect from a first-class avantgarde writer with refreshing readability and abundant irony. Semenko’s poetry is a testimony to Ukrainian culture’s swift alignment with contemporary Ukrainian cultural trends once the suffocating restrictions to the use of the Ukrainian language in czarist Russia had been temporarily loosened.
2. Mykola Khvylovyi
Povist’ pro sanatoriinu zonu (Tale of the Sanatorium Zone) & Val’dshnepy (Woodcocks)
The mature prose of Mykola Khvylovyi is a must read for everyone interested in understanding the political, psychological and cultural entanglements and negotiations in early-Soviet Ukraine. With his expressionist, passionate style, Khvylovyi foregrounds the hopes and disappointments of a generation that believed in both a free and independent Ukraine and the communist utopia. Again, Khvylovyi’s prose is a testimony to the fact that Ukrainian culture was a protagonist of the European cultural conversations of the period, as shown, for example, by the sanatory topos at the core of Sanatoriina zona. In Val’dshnepy, Khvyl’ovyi draws on, and subverts, intertexts from Russian literature, showing Ukrainian literature’s ability to play with the culture of the colonizing empire with freedom and autonomy.
3. Viktor Petrov-Domontovych
Doctor Seraficus
One of the first and most significant examples of Ukrainian modernist prose, this novel shows the intellectual refinement of Ukrainian culture of the 1920s. With its focus on the inner life of the protagonist and his relationship with the outer world, the novel combines subtle psychological analysis with stylistic sophistication, showing that its author took part in the same conversations that united the most renowned names of European modernist prose such as Joyce, Proust, and Musil.
Translations:
1. English: V. Domontovych. On Shaky Ground. Translator Oksana Rosenblum, CEU Press Classics, 2024.
2. Polish: W. Petrow. W stronę krytycznej nowoczesności. Tom1-3. Translators: Katarzyna Kotyńska, Przemysław B. Tomanek, 2023.
3. German: W. Domontowytsch. Das Mädchen mit dem Bären. Translators: Ganna Gnedkova & Peter Marius Huemer. Septime Verlag, 2022.
4. Yuriy Yanovs’kyi
Maister korablia (The Master of the Ship)
The first and most influential novel of one of the many names of Ukrainian literature of the 1920s is a modernist novel with elements of travel literature that offers several insights into the Ukrainian art world of the first Soviet years. Focusing on the development of Ukrainian film in the 1920s, Maister korablia is both a novel on Ukrainian culture and a more universal piece of literature that discusses ambition, passion, thirst for life and love. With his concrete and compelling style, Yanovs’kyi is often referred to as “the Ukrainian Hemingway.”
5. Bohdan Ihor Antonych
Zelena Ievanheliya (The Green Evangelium)
While in the 1930s writers living and working in Soviet Ukraine were being either put to silence or physically eliminated, that part of Western Ukraine that was under Poland could still experience almost unrestrained creative freedom. Familiar with both classic and contemporary German and Polish literature, Antonych wrote a kind of poetry that mesmerizes readers with its celebrations of nature, of the subject’s being part of it, and of art’s ability to convey its magic to readers, combining the still recent avantgarde revolution with the classical atemporality of authentic lyrical poetry.
Translations:
1. Bohdan Ihor Antonych. The Essential Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych: Ecstasies and Elegies. Translator Michael M. Naydan. Bucknell University Press, 2024.
2. Bohdan Ihor Antonych. The Grand Harmony. Translator Michael M. Naydan. Glagoslav Publications B.V., 2017.
3. Bohdan Ihor Antonych. Night Music. Translator Stephen Komarnyckyj. Kalyna Language Press Ltd, 2016.
6. Izdryk
Wozzeck
One of the masterpieces of Ukrainian postmodernism, Wozzeck is the story of a man whose self falls into pieces that have to be analyzed and understood. While title suggests the book’s intellectual entanglement with the European tradition, from Georg Büchner to Alban Berg and beyond, its style and its subject matter show the fertile ground on which Western postmodern aesthetics fell when Ukrainian literature was free to experiment without restrictions after the fall of the Soviet Union. A book that has already been translated into English but that clearly deserves into other languages too.
Translation:
1. Izdryk. Wozzeck. Translator Marko Pavlyshyn, CIUSPress, 2006.
7. Mykola Vorobiov
Selected poetry
While a significant portion of Ukrainian poetry from Taras Shevchenko to the present is concerned with the struggle of the nation, Vorobiov’s poetry is one of the best examples of Ukrainian lyrical writing that one could defined as pure. Written over a long period of time ranging from the 1960s to the new millennium, Vorobiov’s poems defy the usual ways of contemplating the world, going back to its basics. His poetics is both philosophical and instinctively graspable. Two selections of Vorobiov’s poetry have been published over the last thirty years, but translations into other languages are overdue.
Translation:
1. Mykola Vorobiov. Mountain and Flower. Translated by Maria G Rewakowicz, Lost Horse Press, 2020.
8. Marianna Kijanovska
Babyn Yar. Holosamy (Babyn Yar. Voices)
Already translated into English and German, Babyn Yar. Holosamy may be defined as a poetic account of the 1941 Nazi massacre that cost the life of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews. In the book, the victims themselves are given back their voices. Reading Babyn Yar. Holosamy is an emotional journey that will leave no one indifferent. It’s a strong and incredibly intense book that testifies to poetry’s ability to convey feelings and emotions in a unique way. A reading that both rewards its readers through its literary excellence and acts as a reminder of one of the many dark pages of European history of the 20th century from a Ukrainian perspective.
Translations:
- German: Marianna Kijanowska. Babyn Jar. Stimmen. Translated by Claudia Dathe. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2024.
2. English: Marianna Kijanowska. The Voices of Babyn Yar. Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, 2022.
3. Polish: Marianna Kijanowska. Babi Jar. Na głosy. Translated by Adam Pomorski, 2021.
9. Artem Chekh
Khto ty takyi (Who are you?)
A coming-of-age story written by one of the most appreciated writers (and defenders) of today’s Ukraine, Khto ty takyi is also a window on the 1990s. Set in a suburb of Cherkasy, the book follows the young male protagonist’s coming to terms with life in the context of Ukraine’s own self-determination path after the demise of the Soviet project. As suggested by the book’s title, identity is the central issue at stake in Khto ty takyi, with the individual dimension organically blending with the collective one. As such, the book, which was later very successfully filmed, combines tradition – the quest for the self and care for the community – and modernity.
Translation:
1. Artem Chekh. Rock, Paper, Grenade (Khto ty takyi). Translated by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum. Seven Stories Press, 2025.
10. Artem Chapeye
Ne narodzheni dlia viiny
Artem Chapeye’s latest book is a must read for everyone interested in understanding why Ukrainians are fighting Russian aggression through a personal story. A well-established writer, Chapeye writes of the first days of the full-scale war, explaining his decision to become a volunteer, and showing why it’s natural for a pacifist to take up arms and defend his or her country when there’s no other way to stop the invader. This short, readable, engaging book is a hymn to dignity, democracy, and freedom, values that should never be taken for granted.
Translation:
1. Artem Chapeye. Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns. Translated by Zenia H. Tompkins, Seven Stories Press, 2025.
About the list author – Alessandro Achilli
Alessandro Achilli is a literary scholar, university professor, and translator. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Milan with a thesis on Vasyl Stus. Between 2017 and 2020, he lived and worked in Australia, where he taught Ukrainian language and culture at Monash University in Melbourne. He was also a Research Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. After a fellowship at Trier University in Germany in 2021, he returned to Italy and began working at the University of Cagliari. His research focuses on modern and contemporary Slavic literatures. As a translator, he has co-published (with Yaryna Grusha) an anthology of recent Ukrainian poetry, featuring more than thirty poets. He has also translated prose works by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, Markiyan Kamysh, Oksana Zabuzhko, Oleksii Chupa, Vasyl Barka, and others.