Words and War: Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan in conversation with Sasha Dovzhyk (Part 2)

Serhiy Zhadan in conversation with Sasha Dovzhyk. 5 June 2023, London.
Zhadan’s works have given a voice to the generation of Ukrainians who came of age in independent Ukraine, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. His poetry and novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages, speak of freedom and revolution. His most recent works bear witness to the horror of the full-scale invasion, while helping to find the inner strength to resist.
Video editing by Alla Dryzhak
Filming by Alla Dryzhak and Aleksandr Kviria
Interpreter from Ukrainian into English: Maryna Mykhailova
SPEAKERS
Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan is from Starobilsk in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. He studied German and Ukrainian literature in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, and has a PhD in Ukrainian futurism. In the 1990s, he published his first poems and helped organise literary and music festivals. Zhadan has published 12 volumes of poetry and seven works of prose and is the recipient of multiple literary prizes.
His 2014 book Voroshilovgrad won several awards, and BBC Ukraine chose it as the Ukrainian Book of the Decade. Zhadan is the author of the key novel about Russia’s war against Ukraine written so far, The Orphanage (2017). At his sell-out poetry readings, which fill up large concert halls, Ukrainian teenagers and their grannies recite his texts by heart. His Ska band Zhadan i Sobaky (Zhadan and the dogs) is one of the most successful Ukrainian musical projects of the past decades. Its most significant concerts have taken place in the underground stations of Zhadan’s native Kharkiv during Russian bombardments, at Ukrainian military bases, and refugee hubs.
Sasha Dovzhyk
Sasha Dovzhyk is a writer, literary scholar and curator from Zaporizhzhia. She is a Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at UCL SSEES and Special Projects Curator for the Ukrainian Institute London. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CNN Opinion, Open Democracy and others. In addition to her work on Ukraine, she has written widely on fin-de-siecle culture, and is editor of Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley (2023).
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