The German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag published a new book by Serhiy Zhadan Himmel über Charkiw: Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg (Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front), announced Serhiy on his official Facebook page.
Serhiy has been in Kharkiv since February, experiencing together with Kharkiv residents everything that happened in the city during that time. He is an active member of the volunteer movement, raises funds, helping both the military and civilians.
“Serhiy Zhadan walks day and night in the shelled Kharkiv, evacuating children and the elderly from the suburbs, distributing food, coordinating deliveries to the military, and giving concerts. Posts on social networks document his travels around the city and tirelessly, day after day, cheer up the people of Kharkiv,” says the annotation to the publication.
Kharkiv has been under daily shelling since the first day. But the inexhaustible faith in the victory and strength of Ukrainians is constantly present in Zhadan’s posts.
“The book will appear in bookstores in a week. I’m flipping through it as if all this something happened to someone else. But it is nice to see close and familiar faces from Kharkiv in the included photos. Perhaps all this was written just for them, to testify about their strength, faith, and love,” says Serhiy in his post.
Soon, Serhiy Zhadan’s diary entries will be published in English in the USA. And also in Polish and Danish.
In 2020, The New York Times included the edition of the novel
The Orphanage in the list of recommended books for the coming year. Earlier, Serhiy Zhadan’s collection of poems “What We Live For, What We Die for” was included in the list of recommended books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review.
The writer’s works have also been translated into Polish, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, French, and other languages.