Earth Gods: Writings from before the War

Jul 2025 · Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature Book 10 · Harvard University Press - T

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512

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Earth Gods presents the early writings of Taras Prokhasko, one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary writers. Collected here for the first time in one book, these works span various genres yet form a single chronicle. Anna’s Other Days, Prokhasko’s first publication, testifies to the desire to free Ukrainian culture of overt influences of voices, styles, and genres that have dominated it for centuries. FM Galicia collects reflections delivered by the author at a Ukrainian radio show over a five-month period. Emphasizing the relevance of the oral genre as the origin of the text, Prokhasko has created a unique diary that strives to exist outside of literature and invites the reader to meditate on the human condition. The UnSimple—a novel whose action unfolds between the two world wars near Ialivets, in the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains—documents the collapse of the grand narratives of the past, embodied here by the Carpathian earth gods who, despite their magical powers, are unable to save the patriarchal community they’ve been entrusted with from being overrun by the forces of modernization.

A master of reflexive, finely nuanced prose, Prokhasko weaves together narrative strands testifying to the sophistication and integration of Ukrainian culture with the world.

Earth Gods presents the early writings of Taras Prokhasko, one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary writers. Collected here for the first time in one book, these works span various genres yet form a single chronicle. Anna’s Other Days, Prokhasko’s first publication, testifies to the desire to...

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About the author

Taras Prokhasko is a renowned Ukrainian writer, journalist, and essayist and a biologist by training. He has been recognized with the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Award; Book of the Year Award, Ukraine; Yuri Shevelov Prize; and the BBC Ukraine Book of the Year Prize. For his collection of essays Yes, however he was awarded the prestigious National Taras Shevchenko Prize of Ukraine.

Ali Kinsella has been translating from Ukrainian for thirteen years. With co-translator Dzvinia Orlowsky, she was a finalist for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize, granted a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and shortlisted for the 2025 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Mark Andryczyk administers the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and teaches Ukrainian literature at its Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is also the author of The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction.

Uilleam Blacker is Associate Professor in Comparative East European Culture at University College London. He is the author of Memory, the City, and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe and of numerous translations from Ukrainian and Russian.

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