Rights sold to:
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (selection; PIW), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)
Why I Am Not Online / Warum ich nicht im Netz bin
Poems From the War
»These words blaze across the page like missiles aiming at the fourth dimension: What if someone spoke a sentence / That could stir the sonic field of death? In the eternal battle between Orpheus and Morpheus, a great poet’s verbal imagination is always his sharpest weapon, his impenetrable shield. In his face-off with memory and time, Zhadan is certain to prevail.« Askold Melnyczuk
»A classic of modern Ukrainian poetry.« Gary Shteyngart
»A classic of modern Ukrainian poetry.« Gary Shteyngart
»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 snapshots that make the essential appear suddenly and brightly, shortest stories about people who suddenly find themselves on opposing sides or who don’t know where they belong and what is to become of them any longer. A few stanzas convey something of the tragedy of millions of individuals. In...
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»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 snapshots that make the essential appear suddenly and brightly, shortest stories about people who suddenly find themselves on opposing sides or who don’t know where they belong and what is to become of them any longer. A few stanzas convey something of the tragedy of millions of individuals. In the laconic verses, the meaning of Brecht, whose poetry Zhadan has been translating since the Ukrainian revolution, is tangible.
»When Zhadan says ›speak now,‹ he is getting at all the ways the speaking matters: from the trenches in Ukraine that he's known to the memories of Ukrainians that he carries. The urging to speak vibrates through these pages, as if the saying it is always an homage to those who have tasked the poet to sing, while alongside him they go about the business of loving or working or cajoling light out of suffering so that we all might ›have enough stories to brave through winter.‹« Reginald Dwayne Betts
»Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry allows the pain and bravery of those who can only speak through his poems to be heard. Today, in the context of war, his words resonate deeply, offering a powerful and moving journey through the human experience.« Yevgenia Belorusets
»Zhadan is a poet, rock star, and activist whose verse is rooted his native Eastern Ukraine. He draws metaphors from daily life that in turn become the subjects of his poems … urgent messages about life, war, and love.« Amelia Glaser
»This is the sound of War. Zhadan, reporting from the frontlines in Kharkiv, where words are bullets and voices are heard from the dead. … Poetry from bunkers, bomb shelters and graves – poetry from the depths.« Bob Holman
»This is a narrative poetry that relates to current events in concrete terms, questioning, remembering and reflecting in Zhadan’s distinctive, musical, open-ended language.« Katharina Döbler, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»Zhadan does not instil any certainty in the reader but asks illuminating questions without pathos. In his poetic reportages, the language artist feels for empty spaces and finds fragments of assurance in the noise of war despite the lack of illusions.« Gunther Neumann, Wiener Zeitung
»Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry allows the pain and bravery of those who can only speak through his poems to be heard. Today, in the context of war, his words resonate deeply, offering a powerful and moving journey through the human experience.« Yevgenia Belorusets
»Zhadan is a poet, rock star, and activist whose verse is rooted his native Eastern Ukraine. He draws metaphors from daily life that in turn become the subjects of his poems … urgent messages about life, war, and love.« Amelia Glaser
»This is the sound of War. Zhadan, reporting from the frontlines in Kharkiv, where words are bullets and voices are heard from the dead. … Poetry from bunkers, bomb shelters and graves – poetry from the depths.« Bob Holman
»This is a narrative poetry that relates to current events in concrete terms, questioning, remembering and reflecting in Zhadan’s distinctive, musical, open-ended language.« Katharina Döbler, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»Zhadan does not instil any certainty in the reader but asks illuminating questions without pathos. In his poetic reportages, the language artist feels for empty spaces and finds fragments of assurance in the noise of war despite the lack of illusions.« Gunther Neumann, Wiener Zeitung
»When Zhadan says ›speak now,‹ he is getting at all the ways the speaking matters: from the trenches in Ukraine that he's known to the memories of Ukrainians that he carries. The urging to speak vibrates through these pages, as if the saying it is always an homage to those who have tasked the poet to sing, while alongside him they go about the business of loving or working or cajoling light out of suffering so that we all might ›have enough stories to brave...
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2016, 180 pages
Persons
Serhij Zhadan
Author
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...
Serhij Zhadan
Author
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...
© Ekko von Schwichow
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2025
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2025
Cease-Fire
Death brings everyone together: while their deceased mother is lying upstairs in the bedroom, in the kitchen, two brothers see each other for the first time in a long time. Anton, the older of the two, has headed off in search of greener pastures. Tolik, the younger brother, has stayed behind, despite the smouldering war and the increasingly precarious conditions. But now the bridge has been...
Year of Publication: 2025
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2025
Home
Images of flight, dispossession, and injury, spanning millennia, in history and myth: Eurydice, frantically fleeing from a god that is stalking her, fails to notice the serpent and dies from its poisonous bite. Landless cottagers in northern Scotland, relocated to less fertile land or forced to emigrate. A young German nobelwoman, educated and gifted, resists the »given«, the »morals of...
Year of Publication: 2025
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2025
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...
Rights sold to:
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)
Year of Publication: 2024
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2024
Chronicle of My Own Breath
It was supposed to be another anthology, writes Serhiy Zhadan, about the eastern landscape in the winter, the approaching snow, the voices in the air, the vineyards, the city on the horizon filling...
Rights sold to:
Poland (Literackie)
Year of Publication: 2023
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2023
Seeing Farther
On a journey through the south-east of Hungary, the narrator stops off in an almost completely deserted village on the border to Romania. Resignation and a glorification of the past are the most...
Rights sold to:
USA & Canada (NYRB), UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), Spanish world rights (Periférica), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), France (Christian Bourgois), Italy (Iperborea), Netherlands (Pluim), Hungary (Jelenkor)
Year of Publication: 2022
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2022
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....
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Yale UP), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak)
Year of Publication: 2022
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2022
The Captain and Mimi Catt
So cold! And so much snow! Mimi Catt, a snow-white and very clever cat, would prefer nothing more than to stay in her small, cosy basement flat. Even though a nasty mud-brown pug just did his business right in front of Mimi Catt’s window. And on top of it all, a huge ocean liner is stuck in the frozen canal outside the flat! »How is this possible?« Mimi Catt wonders. But once...
Year of Publication: 2022
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2022
Rombo
In May and September 1976, two severe earthquakes rip through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people die under the rubble, tens of...
Rights sold to:
USA & Canada (NYRB), UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), Spanish world rights (Periférica), Catalan rights (Angle), Portugal (Elsinore), France (Christian Bourgois), Italy (Iperborea), Netherlands (Pluim), Denmark (Atlanten), Norway (Forlaget Press), Finland (Lurra), Poland (Drzazgi), Turkey (Axis)
Year of Publication: 2020
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2020
Antenna
What can literature do, what should it do, when there is war? What language do the poets resort to? Are their instruments suited to express »what causes fear«? Since the battles in...
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Fri Tanke), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (Wrocławski Dom Literatury), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor), Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2020
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2020
Slates
Esther Kinsky’s new book is dedicated to slate, the polymorphic, versatile sedimentary rock, and to the Slate Islands, a small archipelago off the West coast of Scotland. For centuries, slate was mined on those islands that are part of the Inner Hebrides and they are lastingly shaped by the intensive industry that was abandoned many decades ago and that has left behind a bizarre landscape of...
Year of Publication: 2018
Esther KinskyYear of Publication: 2018
Grove
Profoundly empathetic, and austere – a minor-key exploration of landscape and land.
Grove is a novel in three parts, each of them concerned with a different...
Rights sold to:
UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), USA & Canada (Transit Books), Spanish world rights (Periférica), France (Grasset), Italy (Il Saggiatore), Netherlands (Pluim), Denmark (Atlanten), Finland (Lurra), Greece (Potamos), Ukraine (Knihy XXI)
Year of Publication: 2017
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2017
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...
Rights sold to:
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)
Year of Publication: 2014
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2014
Mesopotamia
The setting of Serhiy Zhadan’s latest book is the Eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, here and now, a modern Babylon: a city in Mesopotamia, set at the riverbank of diverse languages and...
Rights sold to:
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)
Year of Publication: 2010
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2010
Voroshilovgrad
In expressive prose, Zhadan delivers a road novel from the edge of Europe that dares to dream the dream of freedom in a completely new way: as the search for home in a world without...
Rights sold to:
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)
Year of Publication: 2006
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2006
Democratic Youth Anthem
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...
Rights sold to:
Russia (Amphora), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak), Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2005
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2005
Anarchy in the UKR
»Forget politics, don't read the papers, don't go online, deny them your voice« – thus begins the »Leftist March«, a chapter of Serhiy Zhadan's...
Rights sold to:
France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Pax), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Belarus (Skaryna Press)
Year of Publication: 2004
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2004
Depeche Mode
»A poet and novelist whose work has been variously compared to Rimbaud, Charles Bukowski and Irvine Welsh, Serhiy Zhadan’s first novel Depeche Mode depicts Ukrainian youth during...
Rights sold to:
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)
Year of Publication: 2003
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2003
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...
Rights sold to:
Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2003
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2003
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...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Russia (Agorisk), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)
DISCOVER
News
Serhiy Zhadan Awarded the 2023 Tucholsky Prize by PEN Sweden
Ukrainian poet and author Serhiy Zhadan awarded for his workNews
Serhiy Zhadan receives Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought 2022
The jury praises Zhadan as »a great storyteller who continues the tradition of Central European literature while revolutionising it at the same time.«News