Writers, The Nation, And War: Literature Between Civic Engagement, Trauma and Aesthetic Freedom in Contemporary Ukraine

ACHILLI A

2020-01-01

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Abstract

Contemporary Ukrainian literary culture is characterized by the expectation that literature should act as a moral guide for a country at war, reaffirming the traditional role that Ukrainian writers have played since the earlier phase of modern Ukrainian culture in the nineteenth century. In this article I analyse the critical reception of Internat, a recent war novel by leading Ukrainian writer Serhii Zhadan, and some examples of metaliterary poetry by contemporary Ukrainian writers Pavlo Korobchuk and Borys Humeniuk as instances of the tense relation between the national sphere and the arts in today's Ukraine.