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Arabesques: New Stories
Not yet published
Expected 17 Feb 26The women, men, and children in Serhiy Zhadan’s new collection of stories testify to the dignity of daily life in the war-battered Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Through a series of powerful vignettes we witness the ordinary experiences of people in extraordinary times—weddings, love affairs, tense visits home from the battlefield, desperate deliveries of humanitarian aid.
Highlighting the upheaval since the 2022 Russian invasion, characters from Zhadan’s Mesopotamia and The Orphanage reappear, this time with entirely different concerns: evacuating an elderly woman after the bombardment of a residential area; finding a job for someone who returned from the front with significant disabilities; attending the funeral of a colleague who had led a combat unit on the front lines.
These stories, composed shortly before the author joined the Ukrainian armed forces, give voice to the vulnerability of those whose lives have been transformed by war, who have come to accept that death lurks around every corner, in every building, and on every square.
Highlighting the upheaval since the 2022 Russian invasion, characters from Zhadan’s Mesopotamia and The Orphanage reappear, this time with entirely different concerns: evacuating an elderly woman after the bombardment of a residential area; finding a job for someone who returned from the front with significant disabilities; attending the funeral of a colleague who had led a combat unit on the front lines.
These stories, composed shortly before the author joined the Ukrainian armed forces, give voice to the vulnerability of those whose lives have been transformed by war, who have come to accept that death lurks around every corner, in every building, and on every square.
120 pages, Paperback
Expected publication February 17, 2026
6 people want to read
About the author
Serhiy Zhadan
120 books984 followersSerhiy Zhadan (23 August 1974 in Starobilsk, Luhansk region, Ukraine) is a contemporary Ukrainian novelist, writer, essayist, poet, translator, musician and public figure. Among his most notable works are novels Depeche Mode (2004, translated into into English in 2013 by Glagoslav Publications), Anarchy in the UKR (2005, translation into English is yet to come), Voroshilovgrad (2010, translated into into English in 2016 by Deep Vellum Publishing) and Orphanage (2017, translation into English forthcoming in 2020 by Yale University Press) as well as collection of short stories and poems Mesopotamia (2014, English translation by Yale University Press in 2018).
Please note that this English-language profile is intended for all own literary works of Serhiy Zhadan. For works of other authors translated into Ukrainian from a different language by Zhadan, please add both this profile (as a second author) as well as his Ukrainian-language profile: Сергій Жадан (as a third author)
Please note that this English-language profile is intended for all own literary works of Serhiy Zhadan. For works of other authors translated into Ukrainian from a different language by Zhadan, please add both this profile (as a second author) as well as his Ukrainian-language profile: Сергій Жадан (as a third author)
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