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Twelve Circles

Novel
Original Ukrainian title: Дванадцять обручів, published in 2003 by Krytyka
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Del Vecchio), Norway (Cappelen Damm), Slovenia (Cankarjeva)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Spuyten Duyvil), Hungary (Gondolat), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Lithuanian Writers), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Filip Visnjic)


Twelve Circles / Zwölf Ringe
Novel
Original Ukrainian title: Дванадцять обручів, published in 2003 by Krytyka

Angelus Award 2006

Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding 2006

In the 1990s, Karl-Joseph Zumbrunnen, an Austrian photographer with Galician roots, travels repeatedly through the Ukraine. The birth pangs of this new state, the incongruous mixture of brutally tasteless commercialization, backward Hutsul folklore, re-Sovietization and Habsburg nostalgia fascinates him.

The chaos of the transitional post-Socialist era seems to him infinitely more appealing than the boring life in the West – especially since falling in love with his interpreter Roma...
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In the 1990s, Karl-Joseph Zumbrunnen, an Austrian photographer with Galician roots, travels repeatedly through the Ukraine. The birth pangs of this new state, the incongruous mixture of brutally tasteless commercialization, backward Hutsul folklore, re-Sovietization and Habsburg nostalgia fascinates him.

The chaos of the transitional post-Socialist era seems to him infinitely more appealing than the boring life in the West – especially since falling in love with his interpreter Roma Woronytsch. He accompanies her on a hair-raising trip to the Carpathian mountains. We hear of the happenings in the solitude of the mountains, in the »inn on the moon«, a former observatory and subsequent sports hotel, where, in between movie makers, strippers, bodyguards and intellectuals, Bohdan-Ihor Antonytsch, the outlawed modernist Ukrainian poet is to be found in person; of how, in the end, Zumbrunnen meets his death and embarks on his wonderfully lyrically night flight over central Europe – Andrukhovych relates all this so absorbingly, with so much wit and irony that it is only later that we understand why this postmodern folk novel from Ukraine is in fact about us and the West.

»Andrukhovych is a master of literary legerdemain, keeping twelve balls in the air at once, dazzling us with his verve and dexterity, bringing us into a Carpathian trance which is both daydream and nightmare.« Bill Luvaas, Open Letters Monthly

»Twelve Circles is a flamboyant meditation on the history of everything. Don’t expect the trains to run on time but (in their own time) they arrive and depart and in due time the story of Karl-Joseph Zumbrunnen unfolds before our eyes. Andrukhovych is the ultimate omniscient narrator and his mile-long sentences chart their own unbroken course, fearlessly, with no end in sight. It’s all in the details, the unspoken truths, the sidelong glances ...« Lewis Warsh

»Yuri Andrukhovych writes about his homeland in such a fascinating, cosmopolitan way that we are shocked by our own provinciality.« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Andrukhovych is a master of literary legerdemain, keeping twelve balls in the air at once, dazzling us with his verve and dexterity, bringing us into a Carpathian trance which is both daydream and nightmare.« Bill Luvaas, Open Letters Monthly

»Twelve Circles is a flamboyant meditation on the history of everything. Don’t expect the trains to run on time but (in their own time) they arrive and depart and in due time the story of Karl-Joseph...

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2003, 312 pages
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Suhrkamp authors on the situation in Ukraine.
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Suhrkamp authors on the situation in Ukraine.

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Suhrkamp authors on the situation in Ukraine.

Persons

Yuri Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He is considered the leading contemporary Ukrainian writer. He writes poems, prose, essays and translates from German and Polish.

Yuri Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He is considered the leading contemporary Ukrainian writer. He writes poems,...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

The Price of Our Freedom
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Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2023

»They belong to us, they are one of us and we want them in« – Yuri Andrukhovych had been waiting for this sentence, which presented the prospect of EU membership to his country, for many years. It was uttered in Brussels, three days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. »A deep exhale – amidst the blaring sirens.«

Twenty years ago, his brilliant volume of essays My Final...

Radio Night
Year of Publication: 2021
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2021

»I have always dreamt of writing a novel that has a sound,« says Yuri Andrukhovych, who has spent his life singing, rehearsing with his band and playing countless concerts. His...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (NYRB), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Editora Zain), France (Noir sur Blanc), Poland (Czytelnik), Slovak Republic (N Press), Hungary (Helikon), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (Trei), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga)

 

Justice’s Darlings
Year of Publication: 2017
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2017

Justice’s Darlings, these are crimes and criminals, real and alleged: Bohdan Stashynsky, for example, a KGB officer and assassin who kills the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera in his...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Poland (Warstwy), Bulgaria (Paradox)

Small Encyclopedia of Intimate Cities
Year of Publication: 2011
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2011

Yuri Andrukhovych has invested a lot of time in familiarising himself with foreign cities. In some of them, he got stuck for a while. Others have become true parts of his life:...

Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Croatia (Fraktura)

The Secret
Year of Publication: 2007
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2007
Rarely do the private and the political intertwine so closely as in this ironic portrait of an author who doesn't trust himself an inch.

Where did you feel happy? Why did the football match make you cry? Whose books would you like to learn by heart? Questions a German journalist poses to a Ukrainian author spending a year in Berlin. Over seven whole days, Egon Alt and...
Angels and Demons of the Periphery
Year of Publication: 2006
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2006
»A little bit Sisyphus, a little bit Sacher-Masoch« is how Ukraine’s best-known writer described himself in 2007. The »orange revolution« is a thing of the past, any hopes and dreams are pretty much dead and buried, »let’s start again from the beginning«: with reading Hesse, Benn and Lina Kostenko, early and formative experiences, with the...
My Europe
Year of Publication: 2000
Juri Andruchowytsch, Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2000
In these »two essays on the strangest part of the world«, Yuri Andrukhovych and Andrzej Stasiuk offer a stereoscopic portrait of central Europe. On foot and by car, they travelled...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (print edition Mimesis / digital edition GoWare), Hungary (Kijarat), Bulgaria (Lektura), Romania (Polirom)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Periplum), Croatia (Fraktura)

The Moscoviad
Year of Publication: 2000
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2000
The Moscoviad, Andrukhovych’s most successful book, translated into many languages, was written in Spring 1992 on the banks of Lake Starnberg outside Munich – and is surprisingly...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Besa), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Cappelen Damm), Poland (Czarne), Lithuania (Hieronymus), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Cankarjeva), Greece (World Books), Israel (Nine Lives Press), Ethiopia/Amharic (Hohe Publisher)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Spuyten Duyvil), Russia (New Literary Review), Czech Republic (FRA), Slovakia (Kalligram), Hungary (Gondolat), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (Allfa), Macedonia (Makedonska Rech), Belarus (ARCHE), Georgia (Sulakauri)

My Final Territory
Year of Publication: 1999
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 1999
»Yuri Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine’s preeminent authors and cultural commentators. In recognition of his literary writings and his role as public intellectual he has received numerous...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (University of Toronto Press), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Hungary (Racio), Serbia (Kulturni Centar Novi Sad)

Perverzion
Year of Publication: 1996
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 1996

The godchild of Rabelais and Bakhtin, Bulgakov and Esterházy, it is a whirligig of forms, styles, and apocryphal traditions – an adventure for readers who view life not as...

Rights sold to:

USA (Northwestern UP), Spain (Acantilado), Russia (NLO), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Del Vecchio), Finland (Loki Kirjat), Poland (Czarne), Bulgaria (Paradox), Serbia (Clio)


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