Democratic Youth Anthem
Russia (Amphora), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak), Bulgaria (Paradox)
San Sanytsch, a wrestler with a highschool diploma, joins the »Boxers for Justice and Social Adaptation« who form a brigade of security guards controlling the markets near the tractor factory. After he is almost killed testing the strength of a bulletproof vest, he decides to become the business partner of Goga, a former classmate who returned from the Chechen war and dreams of owning his own club. In a dilapidated sandwich shop named Bread-and-Butter Bar, they open the city's first gay club.
For some years, the eastern-Ukrainian metropolis of Kharkiv has been bustling with people full of unusual business ideas and a sense for market niches. Some of them decide to become undertakers and establish the »House of the Dead« – and make fools of themselves with a power-point-presentation in Budapest; others devote themselves to the specialties of smuggling human organs and trade visas as well as prostitutes at the EU's external boarders.
Just like in Depeche Mode, Serhiy Zhadan pulls out all the stops and in six humorous, fastpaced episodes paints the portraits of a few heroes of the transformation era – players in a society that will soon spit them out.
»You can be excited about each new book by Serhiy Zhadan, because this boldest voice of the young Ukrainian literature scene is able to narrate so full of life, that it’s very difficult to withdraw from its pull. […] Language artist Zhadan deconstructs reality in such a way that chips of hope, comedy and poetry keep appearing and huge, complex problem turn into laconic paradoxes.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»If Scheherazade hadn’t lived in the orient of fairy tales, but in Kharkiv in Eastern Ukraine at the end of the 21st century instead, her nightly stories might have sounded exactly like Zhadan’s.« Literaturen
»You can be excited about each new book by Serhiy Zhadan, because this boldest voice of the young Ukrainian literature scene is able to narrate so full of life, that it’s very difficult to withdraw from its pull. […] Language artist Zhadan deconstructs reality in such a way that chips of hope, comedy and poetry keep...
Persons
Serhij Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, in 1974 and studied German at Kharkiv University. He has been one of the most influential figures in the Kharkiv scene since the early 1990s. He made his literary debut at 17 and has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose. He was awarded the Jan Michalski Prize and the Brücke Berlin Prize (together with translators Juri Durkot und Sabine Stöhr) for Ворошиловград. BBC Ukraine named Ворошиловград the Book of the Decade. In 2022, Zhadan was named Man of the Year by Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) and awarded the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his »outstanding artistic work and his humanitarian stance with which he turns to the people suffering from war and...
Serhiy Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, in 1974 and studied German at Kharkiv University. He has been one of the...
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Cease-Fire
Arabesques
»The trams haven’t been running since February.« Time and again, we encounter moments of calm in this city haunted by the spectre of war. People meet up in places that are still more or less...
English world rights (Yale UP), France (Noir sur Blanc), Netherlands (De Geus), Sweden (Ersatz), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Finland (Sammakko), Poland (Czarne), Romania (Cartier)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Radio Reading (MDR / NDR)
Chronicle of My Own Breath
Poland (Literackie)
Sky Above Kharkiv
This volume contains a selection of texts that Serhiy Zhadan has been publishing on Facebook since the start of the war on February 24, 2022.
He doesn’t have time to keep a diary....
English world rights (Yale UP), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak)
Antenna
Sweden (Fri Tanke), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (Wrocławski Dom Literatury), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor), Bulgaria (Paradox)
The Orphanage
A young teacher plans on bringing his 13-year-old nephew home from the boarding school at the other end of town. The school, in which his working sister has »parked« her son, has come...
English world rights (Yale UP), English Audiobook (Blackstone), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Catalan rights (Quaderns Crema), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Netherlands (de Geus), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Pax), Finland (Sammakko), Japan (Bulrush), Poland (Czarne), Czech Republic (Argo), Czech Audiobook (OneHotBook), Slovak Republic (Absynt), Hungary (Magvetö), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Estonia (Hea Lugu), Latvia (Janis Roze), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Croatia (Edicije Božičević), Slovenia (Beletrina), Greece (Dioptra), North Macedonia (Matica), Belarus (Januškevič), Georgia (Intelekti), Israel (Hakkibutz Hameuchad)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Lindhardt & Ringhof / Saga Egmont)
Why I Am Not Online
»It’s tough to see history being made.« Since the summer of 2014, Serhiy Zhadan notes down his experiences on his journeys into the eastern Ukrainian war zone. They are poetic...
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (selection; PIW), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)
Mesopotamia
English world rights (Yale UP), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Pax), Poland (Czarne), Hungary (Magvető), Latvia (Janis Roze), Belorussia (Januskevic), Georgia (Intelekti)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Schall & Wahn)
Voroshilovgrad
English world rights (Deep Vellum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Russia (Astrel), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), Arabic world rights (Here&There), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Netherlands (De Geus), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Poland (Czarne), Poland Graphic Novel (Artur Wabik), Czech Republic (Argo), Slovak Republic (Dajama), Bulgaria (Paradox), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Latvia (Janis Roze), Croatia (Edicije Božičević), Slovenia (Beletrina), Belarus (Logvinau), Georgia (Intelekti)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Hungary (Europa)
Anarchy in the UKR
France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Pax), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Belarus (Skaryna Press)
Depeche Mode
English world rights (Glagoslav), Russia (Amphora), Italy (Castelvecchi), Sweden (2244/Bonniers), Poland (Czarne), Czech Republic (Éditions Fra), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Paradox), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Estonia (Loomingu Raamatukogu), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Greece (Dioptra)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Schall & Wahn)
Big Mac
With the success of Democratic Youth Anthem, Serhiy Zhadan has established himself as the most original counter-voice to the poetic observations of Juri Andruchowytsch. In Big...
Bulgaria (Paradox)
The History of Culture at the Beginning of the Century
Only in an environment in which anachronistic industrial plants sit in the landscape like dinosaurs, rotting away as the last witnesses of the grandiose Soviet experiment, could the...
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Russia (Agorisk), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)