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.

A mondegreen is something that is heard improperly by someone who then clings to that misinterpretation as fact. Fittingly, Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. His physical dislocation—and his subsequent willful adoption of the Ukrainian language—place the protagonist in a state of disorientation during which he is forced to challenge his convictions. Written in beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people—and cities—are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification. Taking on crucial topics stirred by Russian aggression that began in 2014, the novel stands out for the innovative and probing manner in which it dissects them, while providing a fresh Donbas perspective on Ukrainian identity.