About the event

Book launch: Wołodymyr Danyłenko, “Klatka dla wilgi” (translated from Ukrainian by Andrij Saveneć). The event will feature: Wołodymyr Danyłenko – author, Andrij Saveneć – translator, Ewa Hadrian – moderator.

About the book “Klatka dla wilgi”

Alina, a rural librarian gifted with an extraordinary voice and a phenomenal musical memory, during one of her trips to the city accidentally ends up in the apartment of Mykola Chomyczewski – a translator of Homer and a former prisoner of Stalinist labor camps. This encounter becomes the beginning of her unexpected path toward participating in a music competition that may completely change her life.

Everything is seen through the eyes of Alina’s son, Władek – a perceptive, sensitive observer whose perspective reveals both the comedy of everyday situations and the brutality of a system capable of crushing the individual. The dynamic plot is interwoven with a meticulously reconstructed landscape of the period of stagnation: the realities of life in a military town where Alina’s husband works, the oppressive presence of the state, an atmosphere of suspicion, and a learned submissiveness to authority.

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

Wołodymyr Danyłenko (born in 1959 in Turowiec near Zhytomyr) – Ukrainian prose writer, playwright, radio drama author, literary critic and researcher, and producer of literary projects, Doctor of Literary Studies. After graduating in Ukrainian philology at the Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, he worked as a teacher, journalist, publisher, head of the Culture Department in the Zhytomyr City Administration, editor at the “Słowo i Czas” journal of the Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, chief specialist in the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and lecturer at several universities. He has published numerous prose books, including short story collection “Sen z dzioba jeżyka” (2006), novels “Gazele biednego Remzi” (2008), “Kapelusz Sikorskiego” (2010), “Miłość w stylu baroku” (2011), “Cienie w dworku Tarnowskich” (2012), “Noc o profilu kobiety” (2020), “Ta, która trzyma niebo” (2025), and the literary essays collection “Drwal na pustyni” (2008). He has compiled several anthologies of Ukrainian literature. His works have been translated into Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Japanese, German, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Slovak, and Italian. The novel “Klatka dla wilgi” has been translated into Belarusian and Romanian. Two short stories in Polish translation by Marcin Pastuszak were published in the magazine “Akcent”. He lives in Kyiv and Turowiec.

Andrij Saveneć (born in 1977 in Kornyn, Ukraine) – translator and translation scholar. Graduate of the Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University and the European College of Polish and Ukrainian Universities. He received his PhD at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, where he also taught. Author of the monograph “Poezja w przekładzie: „ukraińska” Szymborska” (2006) and numerous articles on translation studies. His Ukrainian translations include novels by Ernest Hemingway and Salman Rushdie, as well as three selections of poems by Wisława Szymborska. He is the author and translator of the Polish-Ukrainian poetry anthology “Lublin z dala, Lublin z bliska” (2017). His Polish translations include, among others, Jurko Gudz’s poem “Barykady na Krzyżu” (2014), Mykola Riabchuk’s essays “Poprzednie życie” (2018), the conversation book “Worochtarium” by Yurii Andrukhovych, Oleksandr Boichenko, and Orest Drul (2019), and the novel “Charków 1938” by Olexandr Irvanets. He is co-editor of the “Wschodni Express” publishing series.

Ewa Hadrian – Lublin-based Polish philologist and information scientist, cultural promoter, long-time curator at the Hieronim Łopaciński Provincial Public Library. Known for her extensive media activity, including co-creating the cultural TV programme “Afisz” on TVP3 Lublin and “Poranki z Hieronimem”. She is one of the few women honoured with the prestigious bibliophile award Order of the White Raven with Sunflower (awarded in 2021, number 41), in recognition of her contribution to the promotion of reading.

Details

When: July 5, Sunday, 16:00-17:00
Where: Workshops of Culture, Grodzka 7 – patio
Admission free