The Price of Our Freedom / Der Preis unserer Freiheit
Essays
The new collection of essays by Yuri Andrukhovych, one of the most renowned Ukrainian authors and Heine-Preis laureate
»They belong to us, they are one of us and we want them in« – Yuri Andrukhovych had been waiting for this sentence, which presented the prospect of EU membership to his country, for many years. It was uttered in Brussels, three days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. »A deep exhale – amidst the blaring sirens.«
Twenty years ago, his brilliant volume of essays My Final Territory (Дезорієнтація на місцевості), a classic today, was the opening of a discussion that...
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»They belong to us, they are one of us and we want them in« – Yuri Andrukhovych had been waiting for this sentence, which presented the prospect of EU membership to his country, for many years. It was uttered in Brussels, three days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. »A deep exhale – amidst the blaring sirens.«
Twenty years ago, his brilliant volume of essays My Final Territory (Дезорієнтація на місцевості), a classic today, was the opening of a discussion that continued up until February 23, 2022: Where does Ukrainian society want to go? What is the country’s place in Europe? Andrukhovych, a lone voice, warned of Russia’s ambitions to become a great power at every possible opportunity. As the Sisyphus of European understanding, he asked that Ukraine not be forgotten. The Price of Our Freedom gathers texts written between 2014, the year of the Euromaidan, and 2023. They are compulsory reading for everyone who wants to understand how the unimaginable could have happened.
»Yuri Andrukhovych is a passionate advocate of the European idea and represents Ukraine’s identity as a cultural nation. He reminds Europe that the frontline in the defence of freedom and human rights is in Ukraine.« Jury statement at the Heine-Preis 2022
»In Andruchowytsch’s collected speeches and essays, published under the fitting title of The Price of Our Freedom, the essay is revealed as the second major field of mastery of this novelist: always personal, shrewd, and concrete. By turns melancholic and scathing, but never sentimental.« Welt am Sonntag
»Reading Yuri Andruchowytsch’s essay collection The Price of Our Freedom, which gathers together texts from between 2014 and 2023, you find yourself asking time and again: Why did people not listen to this voice of warning before it was too late?« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»In Andruchowytsch’s collected speeches and essays, published under the fitting title of The Price of Our Freedom, the essay is revealed as the second major field of mastery of this novelist: always personal, shrewd, and concrete. By turns melancholic and scathing, but never sentimental.« Welt am Sonntag
»Reading Yuri Andruchowytsch’s essay collection The Price of Our Freedom, which gathers together texts from between 2014 and 2023, you find yourself asking time and again: Why did people not listen to this voice of warning before it was too late?« Ilma Rakusa, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Yuri Andrukhovych is a passionate advocate of the European idea and represents Ukraine’s identity as a cultural nation. He reminds Europe that the frontline in the defence of freedom and human rights is in Ukraine.« Jury statement at the Heine-Preis 2022
»In Andruchowytsch’s collected speeches and essays, published under the fitting title of The Price of Our Freedom, the essay is revealed as the second major field of mastery of this novelist: always personal,...
»In Andruchowytsch’s collected speeches and essays, published under the fitting title of The Price of Our Freedom, the essay is revealed as the second major field of mastery of this novelist: always personal,...
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2023, 207 pages
Persons
Juri Andruchowytsch
Author
Yuri Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He is considered the leading contemporary Ukrainian writer. He writes poems, prose, essays and translates from German and Polish.
Juri Andruchowytsch
Author
Yuri Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He is considered the leading contemporary Ukrainian writer. He writes poems,...
© Ekko von Schwichow
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2021
Radio Night
»I have always dreamt of writing a novel that has a sound,« says Yuri Andrukhovych, who has spent his life singing, rehearsing with his band and playing countless concerts. His...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (NYRB), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Editora Zain), France (Noir sur Blanc), Poland (Czytelnik), Slovak Republic (N Press), Hungary (Helikon), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (Trei), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga)
Year of Publication: 2017
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2017
Justice’s Darlings
Justice’s Darlings, these are crimes and criminals, real and alleged: Bohdan Stashynsky, for example, a KGB officer and assassin who kills the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera in his...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Poland (Warstwy), Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2011
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2011
Small Encyclopedia of Intimate Cities
Yuri Andrukhovych has invested a lot of time in familiarising himself with foreign cities. In some of them, he got stuck for a while. Others have become true parts of his life:...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Croatia (Fraktura)
Year of Publication: 2007
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2007
The Secret
Rarely do the private and the political intertwine so closely as in this ironic portrait of an author who doesn't trust himself an inch.
Where did you feel happy? Why did the football match make you cry? Whose books would you like to learn by heart? Questions a German journalist poses to a Ukrainian author spending a year in Berlin. Over seven whole days, Egon Alt and...
Year of Publication: 2006
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2006
Angels and Demons of the Periphery
»A little bit Sisyphus, a little bit Sacher-Masoch« is how Ukraine’s best-known writer described himself in 2007. The »orange revolution« is a thing of the past, any hopes and dreams are pretty much dead and buried, »let’s start again from the beginning«: with reading Hesse, Benn and Lina Kostenko, early and formative experiences, with the...
Year of Publication: 2003
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2003
Twelve Circles
In the 1990s, Karl-Joseph Zumbrunnen, an Austrian photographer with Galician roots, travels repeatedly through the Ukraine. The birth pangs of this new state, the incongruous mixture of brutally...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Del Vecchio), Norway (Cappelen Damm), Slovenia (Cankarjeva)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Spuyten Duyvil), Hungary (Gondolat), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Lithuanian Writers), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Filip Visnjic)
Year of Publication: 2000
Juri Andruchowytsch, Andrzej StasiukYear of Publication: 2000
My Europe
In these »two essays on the strangest part of the world«, Yuri Andrukhovych and Andrzej Stasiuk offer a stereoscopic portrait of central Europe. On foot and by car, they travelled...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (print edition Mimesis / digital edition GoWare), Hungary (Kijarat), Bulgaria (Lektura), Romania (Polirom)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Czech Republic (Periplum), Croatia (Fraktura)
Year of Publication: 2000
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 2000
The Moscoviad
The Moscoviad, Andrukhovych’s most successful book, translated into many languages, was written in Spring 1992 on the banks of Lake Starnberg outside Munich – and is surprisingly...
Rights sold to:
Spanish world rights (Acantilado), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Besa), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Cappelen Damm), Poland (Czarne), Lithuania (Hieronymus), Croatia (Fraktura), Slovenia (Cankarjeva), Greece (World Books), Israel (Nine Lives Press), Ethiopia/Amharic (Hohe Publisher)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: USA (Spuyten Duyvil), Russia (New Literary Review), Czech Republic (FRA), Slovakia (Kalligram), Hungary (Gondolat), Bulgaria (Paradox), Romania (Allfa), Macedonia (Makedonska Rech), Belarus (ARCHE), Georgia (Sulakauri)
Year of Publication: 1999
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 1999
My Final Territory
»Yuri Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine’s preeminent authors and cultural commentators. In recognition of his literary writings and his role as public intellectual he has received numerous...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (University of Toronto Press), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Hungary (Racio), Serbia (Kulturni Centar Novi Sad)
Year of Publication: 1996
Juri AndruchowytschYear of Publication: 1996
Perverzion
The godchild of Rabelais and Bakhtin, Bulgakov and Esterházy, it is a whirligig of forms, styles, and apocryphal traditions – an adventure for readers who view life not as...
Rights sold to:
USA (Northwestern UP), Spain (Acantilado), Russia (NLO), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Del Vecchio), Finland (Loki Kirjat), Poland (Czarne), Bulgaria (Paradox), Serbia (Clio)