Recreations

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba and editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

Recreations first appeared in the original Ukrainian in 1992, shortly
after Ukraine’s declaration of independence. The novel’s publication
represented the coming to maturity of a new prose and sensibility. Today
it is widely recognized as an important and groundbreaking postmodernist
text.

The book captures the heady atmosphere of the 1989–91 years, when the
old structures of power and authority were falling, and when the revolts
of youth, alongside various countercultural and nationalist currents,
were fusing into an optimistic and sometimes euphoric movement for
reform. Andrukhovych’s novel communicates the vitality and
nonconformism of the younger generation in these years. His characters
make fun of both Soviet and nationalist pieties, and rework and
recontextualize both imperial and anticolonial symbols in amusing ways.

The narrative describes a trip by four poets to a Festival of the
Resurrecting Spirit, a carnival-like event in which the civic and
popular become mixed with the personal, sexual, and strange. At times
boisterous and irreverent, the story is always entertaining and
thought-provoking.

This competent translation includes an introduction that sets the
cultural context as well as footnotes. Makarenko’s appropriately
whimsical illustrations add their own charm to this well-edited and
readable exploration of another world.