Serhij Zhadan
© Ekko von Schwichow
Serhij Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, in 1974 and studied German at Kharkiv University. He has been one of the most influential figures in the Kharkiv scene since the early 1990s. He made his literary debut at 17 and has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose. He was awarded the Jan Michalski Prize and the Brücke Berlin Prize (together with translators Juri Durkot und Sabine Stöhr) for Ворошиловград. BBC Ukraine named Ворошиловград the Book of the Decade. In 2022, Zhadan was named Man of the Year by Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) and awarded the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his »outstanding artistic work and his humanitarian stance with which he turns to the people suffering from war and helps them at the risk of his own life.« Zhadan lives in Kharkiv.
Serhiy Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, in 1974 and studied German at Kharkiv University. He has been one of the most influential figures in the Kharkiv scene since the early 1990s. He made his literary debut at 17 and has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose. He was awarded the Jan Michalski Prize and the Brücke Berlin Prize (together with translators Juri Durkot und Sabine Stöhr) for Ворошиловград. BBC Ukraine named Ворошиловград the Book of the Decade. In 2022, Zhadan was named Man of the Year by Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) and awarded the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his »outstanding artistic work and his humanitarian stance with which he turns to the people suffering from war and helps them at the risk of his own life.« Zhadan lives in Kharkiv.
Awards (selection)
Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought 2022 (Germany)
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2022 (Germany)
Sergio Vieira de Mello Award 2022 (Poland)
Freiheitspreis der Frank-Schirrmacher-Stiftung 2022 (Germany)
EBRD Literature Prize 2022 for Інтернат (UK)
Drahomán Prize 2020 for Aнтена (Ukraine)
ANGELUS Literary Award for Месопотамія 2015 (Poland)
Brücke Berlin Prize for Literature and Translations 2014 for...
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2022 (Germany)
Sergio Vieira de Mello Award 2022 (Poland)
Freiheitspreis der Frank-Schirrmacher-Stiftung 2022 (Germany)
EBRD Literature Prize 2022 for Інтернат (UK)
Drahomán Prize 2020 for Aнтена (Ukraine)
ANGELUS Literary Award for Месопотамія 2015 (Poland)
Brücke Berlin Prize for Literature and Translations 2014 for...
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Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought 2022 (Germany)
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2022 (Germany)
Sergio Vieira de Mello Award 2022 (Poland)
Freiheitspreis der Frank-Schirrmacher-Stiftung 2022 (Germany)
EBRD Literature Prize 2022 for Інтернат (UK)
Drahomán Prize 2020 for Aнтена (Ukraine)
ANGELUS Literary Award for Месопотамія 2015 (Poland)
Brücke Berlin Prize for Literature and Translations 2014 for Ворошиловград (Germany)
Jan Michalski Literature Prize 2014 for Ворошиловград (Switzerland)
BBC Ukraine Book Of The Decade 2014 for Ворошиловград (Ukraine)
Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize 2009 (Poland)
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2022 (Germany)
Sergio Vieira de Mello Award 2022 (Poland)
Freiheitspreis der Frank-Schirrmacher-Stiftung 2022 (Germany)
EBRD Literature Prize 2022 for Інтернат (UK)
Drahomán Prize 2020 for Aнтена (Ukraine)
ANGELUS Literary Award for Месопотамія 2015 (Poland)
Brücke Berlin Prize for Literature and Translations 2014 for Ворошиловград (Germany)
Jan Michalski Literature Prize 2014 for Ворошиловград (Switzerland)
BBC Ukraine Book Of The Decade 2014 for Ворошиловград (Ukraine)
Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize 2009 (Poland)
Praise
»When Zhadan says ›speak now,‹ he is getting at all the ways the speaking matters: from the trenches in Ukraine that he's known to the memories of Ukrainians that he carries. The urging to speak vibrates through these pages, as if the saying it is always an homage to those who have tasked the poet to sing, while alongside him they go about the business of loving or working or cajoling light out of suffering so that we all might ›have enough stories to brave...
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»When Zhadan says ›speak now,‹ he is getting at all the ways the speaking matters: from the trenches in Ukraine that he's known to the memories of Ukrainians that he carries. The urging to speak vibrates through these pages, as if the saying it is always an homage to those who have tasked the poet to sing, while alongside him they go about the business of loving or working or cajoling light out of suffering so that we all might ›have enough stories to brave through winter.‹« Reginald Dwayne Betts
»Zhadan is a poet, rock star, and activist whose verse is rooted his native Eastern Ukraine. He draws metaphors from daily life that in turn become the subjects of his poems, and Tkacz and Phipps have brought these images to life in an English that does justice to Zhadan’s urgent messages about life, war, and love.« Amelia Glaser
»More, perhaps, than any other writer from the post-Soviet era, Serhiy Zhadan speaks to this experience of national and personal upheaval ... « The Times Literary Supplement
»A literary master of enormous force.« Ilya Kaminsky
»Serhiy Zhadan is one of the most important creators of European culture at work today.« Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
»Zhadan's prose is so poetic, his free verse so prosaic. It is difficult to assign a genre to his work: memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation – or a mixture of all these, centered on the themes my generation and our epoch.« Rostislav Melnikov and Yuriy Tsaplin, New Literary Review
»Zhadan is a poet, rock star, and activist whose verse is rooted his native Eastern Ukraine. He draws metaphors from daily life that in turn become the subjects of his poems, and Tkacz and Phipps have brought these images to life in an English that does justice to Zhadan’s urgent messages about life, war, and love.« Amelia Glaser
»More, perhaps, than any other writer from the post-Soviet era, Serhiy Zhadan speaks to this experience of national and personal upheaval ... « The Times Literary Supplement
»A literary master of enormous force.« Ilya Kaminsky
»Serhiy Zhadan is one of the most important creators of European culture at work today.« Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
»Zhadan's prose is so poetic, his free verse so prosaic. It is difficult to assign a genre to his work: memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation – or a mixture of all these, centered on the themes my generation and our epoch.« Rostislav Melnikov and Yuriy Tsaplin, New Literary Review
PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2022
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2022
Sky Above Kharkiv
This volume contains a selection of texts that Serhiy Zhadan has been publishing on Facebook since the start of the war on February 24, 2022.
He doesn’t have time to keep a diary....
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Yale UP), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak)
Year of Publication: 2020
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2020
Antenna
What can literature do, what should it do, when there is war? What language do the poets resort to? Are their instruments suited to express »what causes fear«? Since the battles in...
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Fri Tanke), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (Wrocławski Dom Literatury), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor), Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2017
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2017
The Orphanage
A young teacher plans on bringing his 13-year-old nephew home from the boarding school at the other end of town. The school, in which his working sister has »parked« her son, has come...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Yale UP), English Audiobook (Blackstone), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Catalan rights (Quaderns Crema), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Netherlands (de Geus), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Pax), Finland (Sammakko), Japan (Bulrush), Poland (Czarne), Czech Republic (Argo), Czech Audiobook (OneHotBook), Slovak Republic (Absynt), Hungary (Magvetö), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Estonia (Hea Lugu), Latvia (Janis Roze), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Croatia (Edicije Božičević), Slovenia (Beletrina), Greece (Dioptra), North Macedonia (Matica), Belarus (Januškevič), Georgia (Intelekti), Israel (Hakkibutz Hameuchad)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Lindhardt & Ringhof / Saga Egmont)
Year of Publication: 2016
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2016
Why I Am Not Online
»It’s tough to see history being made.« Since the summer of 2014, Serhiy Zhadan notes down his experiences on his journeys into the eastern Ukrainian war zone. They are poetic...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Poland (selection; PIW), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)
Year of Publication: 2014
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2014
Mesopotamia
The setting of Serhiy Zhadan’s latest book is the Eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, here and now, a modern Babylon: a city in Mesopotamia, set at the riverbank of diverse languages and...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Yale UP), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway (Pax), Poland (Czarne), Hungary (Magvető), Latvia (Janis Roze), Belorussia (Januskevic), Georgia (Intelekti)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Schall & Wahn)
Year of Publication: 2010
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2010
Voroshilovgrad
In expressive prose, Zhadan delivers a road novel from the edge of Europe that dares to dream the dream of freedom in a completely new way: as the search for home in a world without...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Deep Vellum), Spanish world rights (Galaxia Gutenberg), Russia (Astrel), Portuguese rights (Elsinore), Arabic world rights (Here&There), France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Netherlands (De Geus), Denmark (Jensen & Dalgaard), Sweden (Ersatz), Poland (Czarne), Poland Graphic Novel (Artur Wabik), Czech Republic (Argo), Slovak Republic (Dajama), Bulgaria (Paradox), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Latvia (Janis Roze), Croatia (Edicije Božičević), Slovenia (Beletrina), Belarus (Logvinau), Georgia (Intelekti)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Hungary (Europa)
Year of Publication: 2006
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2006
Democratic Youth Anthem
San Sanytsch, a wrestler with a highschool diploma, joins the »Boxers for Justice and Social Adaptation« who form a brigade of security guards controlling the markets near the tractor...
Rights sold to:
Russia (Amphora), Poland (Czarne), Slovak Republic (Brak), Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2005
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2005
Anarchy in the UKR
»Forget politics, don't read the papers, don't go online, deny them your voice« – thus begins the »Leftist March«, a chapter of Serhiy Zhadan's...
Rights sold to:
France (Noir sur Blanc), Italy (Voland), Sweden (Bonniers), Norway (Pax), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Belarus (Skaryna Press)
Year of Publication: 2004
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2004
Depeche Mode
»A poet and novelist whose work has been variously compared to Rimbaud, Charles Bukowski and Irvine Welsh, Serhiy Zhadan’s first novel Depeche Mode depicts Ukrainian youth during...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Glagoslav), Russia (Amphora), Italy (Castelvecchi), Sweden (2244/Bonniers), Poland (Czarne), Czech Republic (Éditions Fra), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Paradox), Republic of Moldova / Romanian rights (Cartier), Estonia (Loomingu Raamatukogu), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Greece (Dioptra)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Schall & Wahn)
Year of Publication: 2003
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2003
Big Mac
With the success of Democratic Youth Anthem, Serhiy Zhadan has established himself as the most original counter-voice to the poetic observations of Juri Andruchowytsch. In Big...
Rights sold to:
Bulgaria (Paradox)
Year of Publication: 2003
Serhij ZhadanYear of Publication: 2003
The History of Culture at the Beginning of the Century
Only in an environment in which anachronistic industrial plants sit in the landscape like dinosaurs, rotting away as the last witnesses of the grandiose Soviet experiment, could the...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (selection; Yale UP), Russia (Agorisk), Finland (selection; Sammakko), Hungary (selection; Jelenkor)
DISCOVER
News
Serhiy Zhadan Awarded the 2023 Tucholsky Prize by PEN Sweden
Ukrainian poet and author Serhiy Zhadan awarded for his workVideo
Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front by Serhiy Zhadan
The book trailer for the English edition of Sky Above Kharkiv by Yale University Press.News