Juri Andruchowytsch (Юрій Андрухович)
Author

Poems

[Індія починається з того, що сняться сни] ukrainian

Translations: be cs de en

[Марко Поло казав неправду, коли] ukrainian

Translations: be cs de lt

[Увійшовши в хащі, де повно птиць] ukrainian

Translations: be cs de lt

[Звичайно, що ріка тяжіє тільки вниз] ukrainian

Translations: be cs de

[Повсюдна присутність у хащах тритонів, драконів] ukrainian

Translations: de be cs

КРИМІНАЛЬНІ СОНЕТИ - НІЖНІСТЬ ukrainian

Translations: be de lt

КРИМІНАЛЬНІ СОНЕТИ - АЗАРТ ukrainian

Translations: de

КРИМІНАЛЬНІ СОНЕТИ - МАФІЯ ukrainian

Translations: de lt

КРИМІНАЛЬНІ СОНЕТИ - ПОСТРІЛ ukrainian

Translations: be de

КОЗАК ЯМАЙКА ukrainian

Translations: be de lt

Juri Andruchowytsch Юрій Андрухович
Author

About

* 13.03.1960, Stanislav (today: Ivano-Frankivsk), Ukraine
lives in: Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine

The Ukrainian writer, poet, essayist and translator Yurii Andrukhovych was born on 13 March 1960 in Stanislav (today: Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). He is considered one of the most important intellectual voices in Ukraine and is one of the best-known contemporary European authors. His work is published in 20 languages.

He studied journalism at the Ukrainian Ivan Fedorov Institute in Lviv and literature at the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow. As early as the 1980s, he belonged to a generation of young, well-known writers who were able to publish underground until perestroika. It was only in the mid-1980s, when the liberalisation of social life also began to have an effect in Ukraine, that they were given the opportunity to publish their works in magazines and individual editions, but above all to organise live events.

In 1985, Andrukhovych founded the now legendary literary performance group Bu-Ba-Bu (burlesque, balagan, buffonada) together with his friends Oleksander Irwanets and Viktor Neborak.

As an author, he repeatedly attracted attention with his provocative choice of topics. In 1989, he surprised everyone with his prose, unconventional by Soviet standards at the time and written during his military service, a series of satirically coloured novellas from the lives of Red Army soldiers. His novels, written and published in the 1990s, had a similar scandalous resonance. In Recreations he takes aim at the national liberation frenzy in Ukraine in 1992.

"Moscoviada" (1993) exposes the mendacity of influential Russian cultural representatives confronted with the emancipation aspirations of the intellectual elites of the former non-Russian republics.

Andrukhovych's poetry creates a carnival-like, whimsical, almost monstrous circus world in which the boundary between the "physical" and the "metaphysical" becomes blurred. In Andrukhovych's poetry, the reader encounters a cultural-historical kaleidoscope of great scope. Like other Ukrainian authors of his generation, he is preoccupied with the phenomenon of the failure of all attempts made in the course of history to establish Ukraine as a state, even though an independent cultural development had been emerging since the 16th century, encompassing education, art, literature and historiography. He sketches with a fine pen the multicultural life and goings-on of little people in the once Galician crown land under the Habsburgs, resurrecting from this sunken world a whole series of historically attested Villonian figures.

Andrukhovych writes screenplays and literary essays and translates texts from German, Polish, Russian and English into Ukrainian, including poetry by R.M. Rilke and B. Pasternak, prose by R. Walser, American poetry of the Beat Generation and the most recent Ukrainian translation versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

Juri Andrukhovych was a participant in the Literaturexpress Europa 2000 project. He has received numerous awards, including the Herder Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. and the Goethe Medal. In 2006 he became a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry.

Andruchovych's works in translation have been published in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the USA.

As a writer, poet, essayist and translator, he is part of the critical, creative scene that reflects and advances the civil society processes after the revolution on the Maidan. Andrukhovych is a staunch supporter of Ukraine on its way to Europe and strives for a rapprochement of Western and Eastern Europe.

Yuri Andrukhovych is Vice President of the Ukrainian Writers' Union and lives in Ivano-Frankivsk.