About the event

Book launch: Maryna Hrymycz, “Kławka” (translated from Ukrainian by Halina Surowiec). The event will feature: Maryna Hrymycz – author, Halina Surowiec (online) – translator, Aleksander Wójtowicz – moderator.

About the book “Kławka”

The novel takes the reader into the harsh reality of Kyiv in 1947. The capital of Soviet Ukraine, slowly rebuilding itself after the Second World War, is as important a protagonist as the titular Kławka, a secretary at the Writers’ Union. Through the lens of her experiences, illusions, and infatuations, the reader witnesses the growing web of pressure and literary purges, denunciations, and compromises with one’s own conscience.

The uncomplicated plot unfolds within a precisely defined topography of Kyiv and nearby Irpin (a retreat destination for the literary bohemia of the time), while the author carefully supplements the text with footnotes that update the map of events. Although the 1947 plenary session of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine, during which figures such as Yurii Yanovskyi and Maksym Rylskyi were harshly criticized, may be considered the central event of the novel, the parallel story of the now-unneeded “heroes” – war invalids who are quietly taken away one night so as not to spoil the image of the capital – forms a concentric circle within Kławka’s personal biography.

This book was published as part of the Literary Eastern Express project, implemented with the support of the European Union under the Creative Europe programme.

About the participants

Maryna Hrymycz (born in 1961 in Kyiv) – Ukrainian writer, anthropologist, cultural manager, publisher, and diplomat. Doctor habilitata in historical sciences, Doctor of Philological Sciences, professor, member of PEN Ukraine, the National Union of Writers of Ukraine, the National Union of Local Historians of Ukraine, and the Memory Studies Association. Author of six monographs and editor of numerous collective monographs and scholarly volumes. She has published 20 novels and stories. Among them are the trilogy: “Kławka” (2019, shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize), “Jura” (2020), “Łara” (2023), as well as “Frida” (2006, 2012) and “Czerwony mak w rosie” (2005, 2011). Founder (2005) and editor-in-chief of Duliby Publishing House.

Halina Surowiec (born in 1981) – literary historian, Polish philologist, and translator from Ukrainian. She is passionate about literature of the Borderlands. Author of the monograph “Sen o Ukrainie”, devoted to the Ukrainian school in Polish literature of the interwar period. She has translated into Polish, among others, “Na brzegu Jarynia” by Aleksandr Kondratyev, the novel “Zniewolona”, based on the television series that became hugely popular in Poland, and co-translated “Zapiski o Annie Achmatowej” by Lydia Chukovskaya, among other works. She prepared for publication the correspondence between Yevhen Malaniuk and Jerzy Giedroyc (1948–1963), the selection of Józef Łobodowski’s essays “Poeta wobec ruchów sejsmicznych historii”, and is the author of the afterword to the first collected edition of “Opowiadania podolskie. Przed wschodem księżyca” by Julian Wołoszynowski.

Aleksander Wójtowicz – PhD habil., professor at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, literary historian, and editor. His research focuses on the history of Polish and European avant-garde movements, modern art, twentieth-century literary editing, and nature writing.

Details

When: July 2, Thursday, 16.00-17:00
Gdzie: Workshops of Culture, Grodzka 7 – patio
Admission free