Culture

One of the greatest 20th century Ukrainian novels, now in English translation

Overwhelmed by the buzzing nightlife of Khreshchatyk Street in central Kyiv, Stepan Radchenko, the despondent protagonist of Valerian Pidmohylnyi’s novel “The City,” looks up at the moon for solace and reminds himself: “The city must be conquered, not despised!” A defining novel of 20th-century Ukrainian literature, "The City" has now been brought to English-language readers by Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute in a fresh translation by Maxim Tarnawsky. The novel traces Radchenko's uneasy