Forgottenness: A Novel

Tanja Maljartschuk, Zenia Tompkins (Translated by)

$17.99

Publication Date: January 23rd, 2024

Publisher:

Liveright

ISBN:

9781324093220

Pages:

272

Available in 3-7 business days

Description

Winner of the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award

Winner of the Usedom Literature Prize

"The first novel originally written in Ukrainian to be published by a major U.S. trade house . . . the novel itself pushes back against despair, simply by virtue of existing . . . haunted and haunting." —Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic

From one of Ukraine’s most prolific contemporary authors comes this profound novel of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time.

An award-winning novel from one of Ukraine’s most prolific contemporary authors, Forgottenness tells a spellbinding story of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time. An exceedingly anxious narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace researching Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882–1931), a social and political activist of Polish descent who played a pivotal role in the struggle for Ukrainian independence—and who nursed his own comorbidities. In this long-deceased ideologue the narrator finally finds companionship, mining her country’s history in pursuit of a better grasp over her own. Brilliantly translated by Zenia Tompkins, Forgottenness movingly illuminates the intricacies of the Ukrainian experience and announces Tanja Maljartschuk as an essential voice in contemporary world literature.

About the Author

Tanja Maljartschuk was born and raised in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, and now lives in Austria. Her works have won the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award, the Usedom Prize, and the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, among others.

Zenia Tompkins is an American literary translator and the founder of the Tompkins Agency for Ukrainian Literature in Translation (TAULT).

Praise for Forgottenness: A Novel

Resurrection is the great theme of Forgottenness. Maljartschuk never uses the word, but reading between the lines, we understand that the exhuming of memory is meant to be a miracle . . . the novel itself pushes back against despair, simply by virtue of existing . . . haunted and haunting.

— Judith Shulevitz - The Atlantic

[A] cryptic, haunting novel meant to be read in this moment . . . Ukraine has been fought over for generations, if not centuries. Forgottenness aims to get at the soul of this struggle.

— Martha Anne Toll - NPR

A landmark translation . . . Forgottenness shares a way to read itself and also to read Ukraine’s latest fight for survival. Maljartschuk personifies the statewide struggle against oblivion in the individual struggle to accept the things you can’t change while refusing to accept the things you can.

— Johannes Lichtman - Foreign Policy

Maljartschuk’s novel succeeds because she defies this expectation: her narrative refuses to indulge in the easy, appealing desire for a triumphalist future, for a future from which nothing has been erased and no one has been lost . . . Maljartschuk’s novel is a reminder that although everything will ultimately be lost to time, swallowed up by what she calls the 'blue whale' of oblivion, one has a duty to slow down this process for as long as possible. Being 'responsible for memory', even in the face of its destruction, is a requirement for a dignified life.
— Linda Kinstler - New Statesman

This tale of two alienated figures in their own time features evocative metaphors aplenty—and a broader meditation on time, memory, and history. The juxtaposition of a historical narrative with narration in the present day never feels overly mannered, and the result is a thoughtful illumination of both an underdocumented period in history and its effects in the present.
— Tobias Carroll - Words Without Borders

Captivating . . . On a subconscious level, the narrator contends with the horrors endured by her family during Ukraine’s centuries-long fight to maintain its history, language, and culture . . . Forgottenness is part of a larger and ongoing trend in contemporary Ukrainian literature where authors are looking to the past in an effort to better understand the present.

— Kate Tsurkan - Kyiv Independent

Originally published in 2016 in Ukrainian, this translation, in light of current events in the country, offers a wider international audience access to Ukrainian voices.
— Booklist

[R]esonant . . . Maljartschuk fruitfully explores themes of erasure and remembrance to meditate on what survives the onslaught of time.
— Publishers Weekly

An impressively sincere self-inquiry about identity.
— Jury of the Usedom Prize, led by Olga Tokarczuk

It's no coincidence that time and memory are the big topic today, feeding off the anxieties of the world. Tanja Maljartschuk’s novel is about the giant blue whale of time swallowing everything living on its way. What she is interested in is not even disappearance but tracelessness. Both personal and political, this book rages against time and oblivion as all true literature does.
— Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter (International Booker Prize 2023)

A novel that dares and wins.
— Taz [Germany]