Category: EBRD Literature prize 2025

My Women by Yuliia Lliukha

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My Women by Yuliia Lliukha

Ukrainian fiction

Original title -Мої жінки

Translator – Hanna Leliv

Source – Personal Copy

I mentioned before I went away that I was planning to work through the shortlist (their longlist really) of this year’s EBRD prize, all the books had arrived before I went away, but the one book that I hadn’t heard of on the whole list, in fact. The publisher was unknown to me. This book was written by a Ukrainian writer. Yuliia Lliukha. She is a writer and columnist from the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Ukraine. She studied at the  Ivan Franko University (I have a novel from Franko in the pipeline to read this year \). She had written some novels before the war in Ukraine, but had a role in the war, raising funds for first aid equipment. She curated the socio-poetic, multimedia project The Mark of Home, a project to support the rehabilitation of Ukrainian war veterans through art and creativity. She compiled the poetry collection of the same name as part of this work.

The woman who was once caught by the air raid siren while she was taking a bath was most afraid of dying like that-without her panties, naked, with wet hair and hairy legs;

afraid that the first responders who would pull her from the rubble would see her white body with cellulite prominent on her thighs and a soft, sagging belly she learned to pull in with corrective underwear and think,

“Who prepares for death like that? She could’ve at least lost a few pounds and worked out for a few months”;

afraid that her neighbors who’d be lucky enough to survive would stand next to the ruins and discuss her chipped manicure and grown-out gray roots, and the old woman who’d always talked behind her back with froth at her mouth when she, happy and tipsy, fluttered out of the black car and waved goodbye to the driver, would say,

“Couldn’t she give some thought to how she’d look in the other world? My dear Irochka would’ve never made such a mess of herself, may her soul rest in peace.”

The opening story caught in the bath

SO this book is a very short story, almost flash fiction and has a clever framing device as each of them is a glimpse into a different woman’s life . Stories within the collection start with The woman who. Then, each is a little snippet of those women’s lives during the war and how it affected 40 different women. Each story is less than two pages long. From the opening a woman caught in the bath during an air raid thinking of been found pantless and with unshaven legs. To a woman who never welcomed her husband back. This tackles the fate of these women, ranging from the small everyday things of war, to those more significant problems like the loss of home and partners. This collection could only be written in the white heart of a war. It has a brutal undercurrent, as these nameless women’s lives are caught in snippets.

The woman who buried her son in a vegetable patch made a cross for him from two pine planks bound together with wire. Her son had bought those planks to fix their house up in spring. But the war broke out, and for some people, spring never arrived.

Her son died instantly. The woman could barely register that.

The first two shells fell somewhere farther away. But a fragment of the third one killed her son as they were running from the summer kitchen toward the cellar. The woman collapsed next to him. She could not even scream.

She only groaned, as if she was the one wounded, and scratched the frozen ground with her nails.

Losing a son or partner is all part of the war

It is hard not to compare this to Alexievich’s work. The comparison is on the back cover of the book. The lack of names and places makes this much more brutal and hard-hitting at times. It captures in Amber a collection of women just trying to get by in the white heat of war. How it affects them all, from thinking of being found with unshaven legs, to losing a husband, home or even homeland. I  said there was a reason I wanted to tackle the EBRD prizes for this year. It has been a prize list I have looked at over the last few years. Unfortunately, it crosses over with the Booker longlist. Which is a shame as this prize has a knack of finding visceral, confronting literature that isn’t as well known as it should be, so far both the books I have read from the shortlist have a visceral nature to the writing, that sort of edge I look for in books. I say to you all go look at this year’s list of books, I’m sure you will find a few books you don’t know on this list. Do you have a book you’ve read about the Ukrainian war that has hit you hard like this book has me?

 

Celebration by Damir Karakaš

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Celebration by Damir Karakaš

Croatian fiction

Orignal title -Proslava

Translator – Ellen Elias-Bursać

Source – Personal copy

I covered the epic Solenoid yesterday. I stay in Eastern Europe and now move to the Balkans, and what may be the shortest book I will read this year. But also one of those small epics of a book that will long sit in my mind. I have long been a fan of Croat literature I haver reviewed 15 novels from Croatia over the years. Now this is a book written by a writer that was when he was youinger a war reporter. He also spent many a year in the region of Croat where the book is set. He also made a living for many yeart in France playing his accordian this bok was Laud by the critics in Croatia when it came out a few years ago. It ids a book that looks into the past but maybe is alo a warning from Croatias own past about events in the present. The book is four stories that cover a peroid from the late 20s to the end of world war two andf are four episodes in the life of Mijo a soldier in the Ustasa force(the right wing Nazi Miltia that comitted genocide in Croat during the second world war).

He lay on the blanket that had over the last days soaked up the smell of rotten leaves and damp earth: under his thick brows he spent most of his time watching the village, then the mixed canopy above his head, noticing all the while how the colors were fading. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye he’d peek at the gleaming orb of the sun, gauging the time of day; never had time passed more slowly: he kept lying there in that one spot, sensing in his nose the sharp odor of melting resin, and all that was moving around him began to bother him: the sun, the wind, the birds that often flew low with their winged sounds over the forest.

Mijo laid hiding , I love the flow of this translation

The book opens as Mijo is on the run at the end of the war. He is near home can see his family and kids but aas they are now round up the member of his ,miltia he has to hide. Set in Lika regfion of Croatia an mounatin area and liike many of these remotre areas this is a rural isolated communoity in itself. This is the thing he does brillantly in this book the place it self is almosat another character. The second story follows the kiling of Dogs in the valley. TRhius is a brutsl story . But is maybe also a nod to the brutal nature iof the woirld and how easy it is to go from killing dogs to people maybe. Then we see his early years meeting his wife just as all the madenss of the war he has got drawn into as the couple not yet married head into antother village with a brother as a chaperon they fall behind and thew mountains and there loive almost become one. I will leave the last tale for you to discover.

Drenka looked over at Mijo and, as she walked, said, “You’ve got a patch of fungus on your neck.” He touched his neck.

“Where?” and then, confused, he shrugged. At a slightly slower pace she said, “When we get back, I have some salve made from rabbit lard I can put on it.” Then they picked up their pace to catch up with Rude and the distance shrank, but if they exchanged glances, it grew; by now they had come out onto a sunlit meadow full of blossoms. Mijo leaned over while walking and stealthily snapped off the crown of a flower in full bloom. First he thought to give it to her, but at the last minute he tucked it into his own hair. When the flower fell out both of them chuckled over it.

The couple head out before they are married again the Lika Countryside is a character in the narrative

This for me is one of those novellas when you read iotI think how did Peiren mis this one , they did small epics like this so wel. I was remind of aStonbes in a landslide another book set in a remote mountainous region. But I was also remind of the chat I had with Dasa Drndic around the growing face of Facism in Europe. I think in hindsight I think she could see the coming storm of Fcism on the horizon. This is a tale of how ordinary people like Mijo get caught up in the madness and violence of the war. This is one of those books that is  soarse in its prose style there isn’t a word to many in the writing . but even so the rivchness of the Lika mountains and even things like Mijo running his hand over the back of a dog jump of the page. and will long live in Memore and the dog kiling scene is another thagty i wouldn’t want to live again but also had that right mix of emmotions in it. This is the first oof the shortlist of booiks for this years EBRD literature prize I am reding. Have you a favourite work from a Balkan writer ?