Traces the lives of Zenon and Natalka Zabobon, who marry in the Ukraine on the day Archduke Ferdinand is shot in Sarajevo, and survive the hardships of war and emigration

What Is Told

Literature & Fiction

Melnyczuk, Askold

United States

Faber&Faber

What is Told, (A New York Times Notable Book), is a masterful novel that sprints across generations, centuries and continents. In a spirited narrative that travels from old Ukraine to New Jersey, Askold Melnyczuk follows his character through the betrayals of war and the promises of marriage. Zenon and Natalka Zabobon marry the day Archduke Ferdinand is shot in Sarajevo. When Natalka wins the battle of the bedroom, Zenon throws his energies into making sure his country doesn’t completely disappear from the map. His brother Stefan, meanwhile, renounces the abstractions of nationalism for the certain pleasures of Paris and his two mistresses, a mother and daughter. Transplanted to the strange soil of the new world by the upheavals of World War II, the family finds itself unprepared for the subtle sabotages of peacetime suburbia. With the ghosts of their extraordinary past never far away, the voyagers resort to the strategies learned in the struggle again the Tartars, Nazis, and Communists. The results are as comic as they are unexpected. In What is Told Askold Melnyczuk reinvents with humor and compassion, the story of a people long hidden behind the Iron Curtain. His novel is a reminder that history is not something that happens only to others. Philip Patrick, of The Boston Globe called the novel, “Magnificent in scope” continuing “Brilliantly Melnyczuk skips across decades and continents….His blend of myth and realism — punctuated with violence and comedy — recalls Garcia Marquez.” And, Alida Becker, of The New York Times Book Review said “To fall in love with Melnyczuk’s voice is no trouble at all….”

Ambassador of the Dead

One Sunday morning, Nick Blud, a successful Boston physician, is home in bed when he receives a phone call from Ada Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. Ada summons Nick back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened-exactly what, no one is willing to say. To find out, Nick sets off on a journey through the past, his own as well as that of Ada's son, Alex, who long has struggled to escape his family's legacy of violence. A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, Ambassador of the Dead introduces Ada Kruk, a mother like no other, at once Mary and Medea, Sarah and Medusa. A study of ambitions gone awry and appetites too easily gratified, this novel is also an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the price of love. Dan Cryer of Newsday labeled Ambassador of the Dead “…Artistic gold” calling Melnyczuk “an able analyst of character and a superb storyteller.” And, Esquire magazine said “A novel so precise and understated it’s stunning.”

Contemporary

Why is everyone angry with Jonathan? Suspended from school a week before Memorial Day, the savvy and cyber-sexed fifteen-year old is charged by his poet-father to write a history of literature in the age of Twitter. Jonathan absconds to Manhattan to care for his high-living godfather, who recently had a stroke, but the siren song of the city keeps him distracted. When he meets the worldly Beatriz, his life threatens to take a sharp turn. Speaking directly to the obsessions of our present, Smedley's Secret Guide reminds us that no one knows how anything will turn out until it happens. As someone once said, our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

excerpt from Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature

Genre Fiction

A novel of intrigue that is played across decades, continents, and generations by the celebrated, New York Times Notable author of Ambassador of the Dead
Late one night, a week after Father's suicide, I finished sweeping the bulk of my inheritance into four giant trash bags, and heaved them into the Dumpster at the construction site around the corner from his apartment. Then I sat down at the two-person coffee table in the middle of his kitchen, the fluorescent light loud as cicadas, and examined the three things I'd kept. The three things that James kept are his father's British military uniform, an oversize glass jar, and a letter written in a language he can't read. They become the keys to unlocking the door on a past James never imagined while growing up amid the security of Boston's north shore, and they send him on an odyssey across England, Austria, and Ukraine. Along the way, he meets his dying aunt Vera, the matriarch of a mysterious branch of the family. His mission puts him face-to-face with the international sex trade, a displaced Palestinian girl with streaked pink hair and attitude to spare, and a violent world in which he is ultimately implicated. From old America, new Europe, and the timeless Middle East, James learns what it means to live in the webbed world of the twenty-first century. 
In The House of Widows, Askold Melnyczuk offers a searing exploration of the individual's role in the inexorable assault of history.

The House of Widows: An Oral History

Graywolf Press

A late-night phone call overturns Nick BludÆs settled life, drawing the successful physician back into his old Ukranian-American neighborhood where violence still reigns.

Counterpoint

A late-night phone call overturns Nick BludÆs settled life, drawing the successful physician back into his old Ukranian-American neighborhood where violence still reigns. Reprint.

In the eight stories comprising THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT BOW the cast of characters includes a journalist in a Middle Eastern war zone, an unemployed actor struggling with elder care, members of a commune planning to kidnap a priest, a torturer's mother and, finally, Nikolai Gogol wrestling with his angels and demons.

The Man Who Would Not Bow: and Other Stories

Grand Iota

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Books by Melnyczuk, Askold

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Melnyczuk, Askold. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What Is Told

What Is Told

What Is Told

Ambassador of the Dead

excerpt from Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature

The House of Widows: An Oral History

Ambassador of the Dead

Ambassador of the Dead

The Man Who Would Not Bow: and Other Stories