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Lina Kostenko presented her first prose novel “Diary of a Ukrainian Madman”
Covered by “The Ukrainian Truth” and “Ukrinform”, Photo by Serhiy Marchenko and from the “Glavred” website
On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, ”Diary of a Ukrainian Madman” by Lina Kostenko, one of the most anticipated books in the Ukrainian literature was presented.
This is the first prose novel by Lina Kostenko and her first new book for the last 20 years. The book was presented by Ivan Malkovych and Lina Kostenko.
“I hoped for a good event, but it turned out to be an explosion. The book is truly impressive. I guess no one has ever written like that here. I hope this will be a real surprise for everybody,” Ivan Malkovych commented on the new book by Lina Kostenko.
The head of A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA Publishers quoted an academician Mr. Ivan Dzyuba, who read the manuscript of the book and called it “a stunning chronicle of an intellectual soul in the world of the Ukrainian and planetary absurd.”
amount of work (from the early 2001 to December 2010) in her attempt to research the mankind and the Ukrainian society entering the third millennium, as well as “to correlate Ukraine with the world, a human being with Ukraine and with the world”. “This is not a “chicklit”. This is a surrealistic Babylon of the contemporary world,” she said.
The novel is written on behalf of a 35-year old PC programmer, who thoroughly “scans” all the wrenches of our globalized era against his personal drama.
“I was really sorry for my dear Independent State and I did not want to write anything aggravating. But when I saw that we are losing it, that it is all no less than a moral catastrophe and it is not only our foes who are guilty in it, but also the Ukrainians themselves and often even patriots, - then I deliberately went for it, for sometimes it is vital to shake off our last illusions and just take hold over the edge of the abyss,” she said.
According to Ivan Malkovych, the book, edited really in a blink of an eye (the manuscript got to the Publishers only three weeks ago), just came out of the printing factory to Kyiv.
The publisher also confirmed that Lina Kostenko agreed to take part in 8 presentations of the book in different cities of Ukraine, not necessarily the biggest.
The possible future books of Lina Kostenko were also in question during the presentation. Thus, if the novel presented that day was written on behalf of a man, then the next one (the novel that has “gemmated” from “Diary of a Ukrainian Madman” and has been written in parallel) will be on behalf of a woman, for the current main protagonist has a wife who failed to fulfill her potential in the current book,” the author confessed.
Moreover, two collections of Lina Kostenko’s poetry are ready to be published, as well as the book about Chornobyl, for which Lina Kostenko has been gathering materials since 1995.
The initial circulation of the book is 10 000 copies.
