Status Updates From The Exile: A novel about Ta...

Julian and Jaisak did not notice how the black-blue sky I the tinfuk flooded with a blue glow that had swallowed up the stars. The night passed by in a fleeting moment.

Very interesting exploration and rebellion against serfdom.

I like it how the story develops. As they reach the blue lake it is getting really interesting but also many farewells

"This expedition is the main purpose of my life. Throughout many sleepless nights I have been thinking about it, dreaming of it. ... Man's soul yearns for the new and unknown", the exited Butakov lapsed into silence.

Life is a continuance of endless partings with something or someone ...

The story of the jigits and the chapter "the taming" is really good, although it seems to have little to do with Shevchenko.

"This was Shevchenko, the marvelous magician of the word who for the first time had made the Ukrainian language sound with the same force and beauty as the Russian under a magic pen of Pushkin and Lermontov, and on the German in the fiery verse of Friedrich Schiller."

Summoning his will, Lazarevsky forced himself to buckle down to
work: he had to write an account on the results of an investigation into
an intricate complaint, the disen­tanglement of which would have made
even the devil go up in smoke in cool weather, let alone in a torrid blaze
of forty degrees centigrade. Three times he started to write, and every
time he had to throw it into the paper basket.

“I’ll die tomorrow,” the old man said in a stern and mat­ter-
of-fact manner. “Let me admire the sun for the last time… and
the land… It’s so beautiful,” he added quietly. “Tell the people to
come and bid me farewell.”