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Award-winning Ukranian author Artem Chapeye’s new novel follows a young couple who escape city life to the mountains in Ukraine, only to discover an altered reality upon their return. As in Ling Ma’s After a young couple return from their summer in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, they discover that the world as they once knew it no longer exists. Survivors are forced to adapt to the harsh conditions of their new reality: a place where erosion floats in on a breeze, and ceasing to exist comes with a deceptively joyous capitulation. Overcoming deeply rooted fears, they try to forge another world, uniting with those who continue to fight the darker urges that can emerge when a society must rebuild. Will the couple be able to survive, make alliances with others, and give birth to a new generation? Will the insidiousness of human nature manifest itself in this new, post-apocalyptic world? Filled with beautifully melancholic and black humor,
About the author
An author of both creative nonfiction and popular fiction, ARTEM CHAPEYE was born and raised in the small Western Ukrainian city of Kolomyia and has spent much of the last twenty years living in Kyiv. He is the author of two novels and four books of creative nonfiction in Ukrainian and is a co-author of a book of war reportage and has four-times been a finalist of the BBC Book of the Year Award. The title story of his recent collection The Ukraine (Seven Stories Press; January 2024) was excerpted in The New Yorker and received high praise. Artem is an avid traveler who spent close to two years living, working, and traveling in the U.S. and Central America—an experience that has greatly informed his writing. His work has been translated into seven languages and has appeared in English in the Best European Fiction anthology and in publications such as Refugees Worldwide, translated by Marian Schwartz. Artem is a past recipient of the Central European Initiative Fellowship for Writers in Residence (Slovenia) and the Paul Celan Fellowship for Translators (Austria), as well as a finalist of the Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism. He serves on the board of PEN Ukraine. He has been a soldier in the Ukrainian army since the early days of the Russian invasion.
DAISY GIBBONS is a literary translator from Ukrainian into English. A graduate of Cambridge University’s Slavonic Department, she took up translation and interpreting while living in Kyiv. She translates contemporary and classic Ukrainian literature and drama, and has been awarded prizes from the Ukrainian Institute in London for her work. She has translated works by Lesia Ukrainka, Sofia Andrukhovych, Victoria Amelina, Artem Chapeye, Artem Chekh, Tamara Duda, Oleg Sentsov, Olena Stiazhkina, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Irena Karpa, among others. Extracts of her work and short pieces have been published by The Guardian, Harper’s magazine, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times. She now spends her time between Oxford and Ukraine.
