Serhiy Zhadan's Arabesques Book of the Month on Ö1
News26.05.2025
Serhiy Zhadan's latest collection of stories, Arabesques, has been selected as book of the month by Austrian radio station Ö1.
They had the following to say about Zhadan and his book:
»Serhiy Zhadan's stories are painful to read because he does not shy away from the worst of experiences; nor does he try to graft any hope onto them. For Zhadan, the hope lies in the fact that even the worst experiences can be recounted.
Zhadan is a master of the narrative craft. He knows when to take a brief look at a scene from a distance and when to zoom in linguistically on a scene or landscape , and nothing is left to chance, especially at the beginning and end of his texts — even his apparent casualness is precisely calculated. He employs complex means to generate the force of a radical simplicity.
Serhiy Zhadan manages to engage with war and its traumas without being swallowed up by them. Sometimes there are books that you are grateful for, that you cannot escape, that will not let you go. And you want to tell everyone: you have to read this! Serhij Zhadan's new collection of stories, entitled Arabesques, is such a book.«
They had the following to say about Zhadan and his book:
»Serhiy Zhadan's stories are painful to read because he does not shy away from the worst of experiences; nor does he try to graft any hope onto them. For Zhadan, the hope lies in the fact that even the worst experiences can be recounted.
Zhadan is a master of the narrative craft. He knows when to take a brief look at a scene from a distance and when to zoom in linguistically on a scene or landscape , and nothing is left to chance, especially at the beginning and end of his texts — even his apparent casualness is precisely calculated. He employs complex means to generate the force of a radical simplicity.
Serhiy Zhadan manages to engage with war and its traumas without being swallowed up by them. Sometimes there are books that you are grateful for, that you cannot escape, that will not let you go. And you want to tell everyone: you have to read this! Serhij Zhadan's new collection of stories, entitled Arabesques, is such a book.«