The Moscoviad

"Andrukhovych came to fame in the 1980s as a postmodern Ukrainian writer who crosses genres. I’m particularly excited about his novel The Moscoviad , which offers a view of Moscow by a non-Russian—a colonized subject. It’s a decentered perspective on the heart of the empire, which I think we don’t get too often. When we speak about Moscow and Russian culture, it’s usually viewed through a Russian lens, or perhaps through the lens of an outsider who is fascinated by this image of great Russian culture. This view of a colonized Ukrainian subject, who is inside the capital of the empire as it is falling apart, is quite interesting. Set in 1991 and published in 1993, The Moscoviad allows us to witness the empire—the Soviet Union—disintegrating before our very eyes. This disintegration takes place at the level of the plot, as the character is haunted by KGB officers and he’s trying to escape from them. But it also takes place at the level of form, given the novel’s fragmented structure. And it takes place at the level of language, as the author weaves in insertions from other European languages, including German phrases and Russian obscenities. It’s a postmodern, postcolonial, very adventurous novel. It’s also darkly funny. Yes. Ukraine, for a long time, was divided between various empires, so it had this diverse culture in which, on the territory of Ukraine, German, Polish, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Crimean Tatar languages were spoken and they intermingled and influenced each other. When we speak about Ukrainian literature, we should also keep all these influences in mind and broaden our understanding of what the national literature is. Ukrainian literature doesn’t have to be written in the Ukrainian language. It shows us this mixture of languages and linguistic influences, which I find very interesting."