New Books In Eastern European Studies

Tamara Hundorova’s The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (Academic Studies Press, 2019) is a compelling study of the literary changes that mark Ukrainian literature at the end of the 20th century. As the title of the book prompts, a starting point—or rather a triggering moment for further metamorphoses—is the Chornobyl catastrophe. However, this trajectory is further complicated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two events—different in its nature and affects—produce a unique environment for literary, ideological, and political responses. Tamara Hundorova looks at the literary process from the perspective of postmodern dialogical shifts. But what are the premises of Ukrainian postmodernism? How does it develop vis-à-vis its numerous “foreign” counterparts? How does the Soviet past shape the specificities of Ukrainian postmodernism? In The Post-Chornobyl Library, postmodernism is discussed in terms of traumas. As Tamara Hundorova argues, in Ukrainian literature postmodernism, w