Spanning sixty tumultuous years of Ukrainian history, this multigenerational saga weaves a dramatic and intricate web of love, sex, friendship, and death. At its center: three women linked by the abandoned secrets of the past—secrets that refuse to remain hidden.While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin’s secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman—and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future. For even as she delves into the secrets of Olena’s life, Daryna grapples with the suspicious death of a painter who just may be the latest victim of a corrupt political power play.From the dim days of World War II to the eve of Orange Revolution, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is an “epic of enlightening force” that explores the enduring power of the dead over the living.

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Literature & Fiction

Zabuzhko, Oksana

Literary

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

Oksana Zabuzhko, author of "the most influential Ukrainian book in the fifteen years since independence," Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex, returns with a gripping short story collection. Oksana Zabuzhko, Ukraine's leading public intellectual, is called upon to make sense of the unthinkable reality of our times. In this breathtaking short story collection, she turns the concept of truth over in her hands like a beautifully crafted pair of gloves. From the triumph of the Orange Revolution, which marked the start of the twenty-first century, to domestic victories in matchmaking, sibling rivalry, and even tennis, Zabuzhko manages to shock the reader by juxtaposing things as they are--inarguable, visible to the naked eye--with how things could be, weaving myth and fairy tale into pivotal moments just as we weave a satisfying narrative arc into our own personal mythologies. At once intimate and worldly, these stories resonate with Zabuzhko's irreverent and prescient voice, echoing long after reading.

Amazon Crossing

Review\n“Themes of fear, desire, and national camaraderie flow through Ukrainian author and philosopher Zabuzhko’s (The Museum of Abandoned Secrets, 2012, etc.) eight fiery tales. Zabuzhko has been recognized internationally for her irreverent voice and, even within the first few pages of this collection, one can see why…Evocative stories about the way national issues impact even the most personal aspects of life.” ―Kirkus Reviews\n“Objective truth and personal mythologies collide in Zabuzhko’s short story collection, which centers on the question of just what truth is in this contemporary moment. She takes readers on a journey from the triumph of the Orange Revolution to domestic victories in matchmaking and sibling rivalry, challenging us to think about how things could be by incorporating elements of myth and fairytale in these breathtaking stories.” ―PEN America\n“Oksana Zabuzhko makes her triumphant return to U.S. publishing with [this] passionate short story collection.” ―Women Writers, Women’s Books\n“At once intimate and worldly, these stories resonate with Zabuzhko’s irreverent and prescient voice, echoing long after reading.” ―Midwest Book Review\n“In a collection that coheres pivotal ideas about womanhood and history with impeccable craft, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko has once again impressed her brilliance upon the English-speaking world with the newly released Your Ad Could Go Here…Known equally for her adeptness in criticism and philosophy as her accomplishments in poetry and fiction, Zabuzhko’s refined perspective on Ukrainian identity and feminism, enlivening her characters and narratives, is a gift for readers everywhere…Zabuzhko’s protagonists―invariably women―turn their attention inward, without losing sight of their physical selves. They find strength, power, faults―and a wellspring of self-love, despite being riven by the natural contradictions of a full life…The eight stories that make up the book are by turns realistic, surreal, and supernatural, and they conspire to place the collection right at the border where our world gives way to magic. Here, Zabuzhko continues the interrogation of gender and Ukrainian identity that has characterized her decades of writing and scholarship…Whitewater sentences cascade around banks of commas and drop the reader into new altitudes. Tossed-out asides contain a depth of experience and reveal Zabuzhko’s dedication to her theme…The women of these stories observe their own actions and feelings amid both internationally significant events (the 2004 Orange Revolution) and more quotidian turning points (a daughter’s teenage years). But their preoccupation is both intellectual and physical: Zabuzhko’s characters are unapologetically embodied. Their complicated and evolving relationships with physicality are treated with respect, as an integral component of selfhood, whether they’re embracing their own sexuality or confronting a loss of beauty. Taken together, these stories push for a way forward for Ukrainian women and celebrate the country’s activists…Zabuzhko’s stories, and their expert translations, help do that job, as they knit together Ukraine’s past and hoped-for future. Despite the subtle and overt activism at work, Zabuzhko keeps looking back: she articulates the importance of Ukraine’s democratic heritage…It’s impossible not to read this as Zabuzhko’s own mission statement, given how well she succeeds in this collection.” ―Asymptote Journal\n“Her new collection of stories Your Ad Could Go Here…reveals Zabuzhko to be a versatile writer of short prose…the translators expertly follow the disorientating, but thrilling, twists of Zabuzhko’s long, compound sentences and sudden shifts in tone…whether in poetry, prose or essays, her central concern has always been the impact of destructive, collective history on the delicate fate of the individual, and she is especially interested in how ideologies, repression and violence imprint themselves on the female body, even acro

Called “the most influential Ukrainian book for the 15 years of independence,” Oksana Zabuzhko’s Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex became an international phenomenon when it shot to number one on the Ukrainian bestseller list and remained there throughout the 1990s. The novel is narrated in first-person streams of thought by a sharp-tongued poet with an irreverently honest voice. She is visiting professor of Slavic studies at Harvard and her exposure to American values and behaviors conspires with her yearning to break free from Ukrainian conventions. In her despair over a recently ended affair, she turns her attention to the details of her lover’s abusive behavior. In detailing the power her Ukrainian lover wielded over her, and in admitting the underlying reasons for her attraction to him, she begins to see the chains that have defined her as a Ukrainian woman – and in doing so, exposes and calls into question her country’s culture of fear and repression at the very time that it wrestled its way toward independence.

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

Contemporary

Spanning sixty tumultuous years of Ukrainian history, this multigenerational saga weaves a dramatic and intricate web of love, sex, friendship, and death. At its center: three women linked by the abandoned secrets of the past—secrets that refuse to remain hidden. 
While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin’s secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman—and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future. For even as she delves into the secrets of Olena’s life, Daryna grapples with the suspicious death of a painter who just may be the latest victim of a corrupt political power play. 
From the dim days of World War II to the eve of Orange Revolution, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is an “epic of enlightening force” that explores the enduring power of the dead over the living.

Clytemnestra plotting her husband's murder, Ophelia criticizing her creator, and a report from Chernobyl all offer the poet occasions for reflections marked by a sophisticated wit and a philosophical probing reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska or Adam Zagajewski. By turns urgent and ironic, Zabuzhko's poetry stands alongside the finest and most important work to emerge from Europe in the last half century.

Selected Poems of Oksana Zabuzhko

Poetry

Arrowsmith Press

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Books by Zabuzhko, Oksana

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

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Selected Poems of Oksana Zabuzhko