Listen to Volodymyr Dibrova introducing and reading from his novel, Andrijivs’kyj uzviz (WMA, 25 min)

Information on how to obtain a copy of Andrijivs’kyj uzvi (PDF)

Harvard celebrates the completion of the Krawciw Map Project

April 7, 2008

Institute Author, Volodymyr Dibrova wins BBC Book Prize for novel, Andrijivs’kyj uzviz

On December 14, 2007, the Ukrainian service of the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that the winner of the third annual BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year prize was Harvard’s own Volodymyr Dibrova for his novel, (Andrew’s Way, Fact, Kyiv, 2007). Mr. Dibrova is an editor at the Ukrainian Research Institute and is a preceptor in Harvard’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. In addition to his fall and spring term responsibilities, Mr. Dibrova is a long standing member of the faculty of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute where he teaches advanced Ukrainian.

The BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the year award, modeled on the Man Booker Literary Prize, recognizes a contemporary writer for excellence in fiction in the Ukrainian language. This is the third year the prize has been awarded. The two previous winners were novelist Yurij Vynnychuk from Lviv (2005) and poet Serhij Zhadan from Kharkiv (2006). This year, eighteen authors were nominated. Their novels and short stories were evaluated by a panel of judges headed by Vira Ageyeva of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The prize was announced on December 14 at a ceremony event held at Kyiv’s literary club “Cupid” following a short speech by the British Consular General Martin Harris. Mr Dibrova’s son Ivan accepted the award on his father’s behalf.

In a written acceptance speech, Mr. Dibrova thanked the BBC and the judges’ panel for the award. “This news is a great honor, joy and inspiration” wrote the author. He also greeted his fellow-nominees and wished them clarity of vision and success in their own work. “We have a common task to create readers who would be drawn to Ukrainian literature not because it is written in Ukrainian, but because there they can find exactly what they are looking for – light, joy, beauty and depth. None of us knows in advance how to achieve that. For most of us it’s a nerve-wracking struggle. And yet as G.Vico said, ‘Sembrano travestia, sono opportunita’ (What looks like a turmoil, carries opportunity).”

Later in the day, the BBC held a live interview with the author at WGBH studios in Boston. Excerpts from the interview are set out below.

BBC: How would you describe your latest novel “Andrew’s Way? What and who is it about? And what made you write this book?

VOLODYMYR DIBROVA (VD): At the beginning of the book its main character — a 54-year old deputy-rector of a university — goes to the feast The Day of Kyiv that is organized every May on Andrijivs’kyj uzviz, a picturesque street that connects the upper and the lower parts of the city. While walking there he suffers a heart attack or a stroke, slips into coma and travels back in time to his childhood.

There are five chapters representing each of the “stops” he makes on the way. This plot allows us to visit the half-deserted Kyiv in the Chornobyl summer of 1986, the mid 70s, the late 60s and finally, 1953, the year Stalin died.

It is a story of a one man’s journey through his life — only he travels not forward but backwards. It was Soren Kierkegaard who said something to the effect that we live our life forward but we can make sense of it only when we move in the opposite direction. And this is exactly what the main character is doing. Even his name remains unrevealed until the last page of the last chapter. And all the other characters have names after the roles they perform in the story (wife, friend, daughter, the officer, the girl, the boss etc.). And it’s not a literary gimmick really. Behind it there is a big question that I put to myself at the time. Namely, what, if anything, makes the lives and experiences of Ukrainians, and specifically people living in Kyiv in the second half of the 20th century important, relevant or interesting to the rest of the world. Is this experience unique or is it something that people all over the world go through over and over again with each passing generation? To figure it out for myself I had to strip my characters of their funny (at least to outsiders’ ears) Slavic names, to “translate” the peculiarities and the exoticisms of the Soviet lifestyle into something that would be understood by a wider audience and to get to the wire of the human relationships. In other words the idea was to look at what happened to us, as a country and as a society, from a somewhat different perspective.

BBC: It took you 12 years to write Andrew’s Way. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s a long time considering the modern pace of life?

VD: When it comes to creative process the only pace I have to consider is the pace of my heartbeat. The rest is a nuisance, informational noise, or “sound and fury signifying nothing”. The issue of time is a more interesting matter. You see, unlike scientists and theologians, we normally perceive time as a pre-packaged set of past, present and future events. Very few people are capable of living in the present. All we have is this present moment; yet it takes a disaster or super-human bravery to live here and now. It turns out that we are more comfortable filling our lives with illusions of the past and the future.

Well, the main character of Andrijivs’kyj uzviz does not have this luxury. All he owns is his past but he has to relive it as if there is only eternal today. Thus, he realizes that the events he experiences right now will influence his future but is unable to change anything. So he has to keep traveling backwards hoping that at some point he’ll be able to reverse the course of his life.

BBC: While reading this book I had an impression that nothing, not a single word, could be added or deleted from it. How many drafts did you have?

VD: Believe me, there were quite a few drafts. I had to cut a lot of material before I came up with the draft I was pleased with.

BBC: But doesn’t it hurt when you have to throw away something that you worked so hard on?

VD: On the contrary. I feel elated when I make cuts and jettison extra stuff. It is fun really. Anyway, who needs extra weight?

BBC: Your novel begins and ends with the death of its main character…

VD – I wouldn’t be so sure. Nearly every reviewer of this book assumes that it is about the death of the main character. But the book does not say it. All we know is that he suffers either from a heart attack or a stroke, slips into a coma and travels back in time into his childhood. At the end of the book he opens his eyes and sees his wife. Has he come out of a coma? Or is he savoring his first after-life experience? Hard to say. But I normally shun pop mysticism, you know. Anyway that’s not the point. The novel ends with two nominative sentences – “The beginning and the end. The end and the beginning.” That pretty much sums it up.

BBC: You obviously have a lot in common with your main character. Is it an autobiographical novel?

VD: Not at all. There are no more autobiographical facts than there is salt in any dish. I always thought that to anyone who is at least vaguely familiar with what literature is all about, it is clear that authors rely on their knowledge of life and personal experience when they create characters, come up with a plot, or develop their ideas. It’s unavoidable. They can’t help using their every little crumb of life that they accumulated. Even if they create a total fantasy. The same is true when it comes to writing an autobiography. G.K. Chesterton once said that you cannot write an autobiography without turning it into a novel. I dare say that the same rule applies to even a diary. Which means, putting it bluntly, that every writer is basically a day-dreamer and a liar.

BBC: How comfortable does a Ukrainian intellectual, like yourself, feel in the US?

VD: I am not certain I quite fit the description of “an intellectual.” Most of the time I go to work, I teach, I do editorial work and, above all, I don’t live off literature or literary criticism. These are still more like a venue of pleasure or a hobby to me. “Comfortable” is another word that I have problems with. I’m afraid I don’t find too much comfort in my life. True, I try to enjoy every bit of comfort my daily life offers me. But I can’t say that I live a “comfortable” life in the conventional sense of the word. I think of myself more in terms of a working horse, a one-day-at-a-time kind of person. All I know is that since 1996 (the time I came to Harvard Unveristy) I have published 6 books (5 in Ukraine and 1 in the US). Given the circumstances of my life, had I stayed in Kyiv, I don’t think I would have accomplished that.

BBC: What do you teach at Harvard University?

VD: Beginning Ukrainian, Advanced Ukrainian and a variety of courses called “GR” (tutorials or assisted reading). Those are basically for graduate students who write or do research on topics connected with Ukraine – literature, history, political science, health care, translation and so on.

BBC: How closely do you follow what is happening in Ukraine and, in particular, in literature? Do you feel you are part of that process?

VD: Yes, I think I do. After all, it is in my job description. We, at Harvard and at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute have an impressive collection of everything that was and is published in Ukraine. We also subscribe to all major literary magazines. Besides, as a person and, especially as a writer I certainly feel part of it all. That’s why I don’t have to go hunting for every piece of news coming from my country. Ukraine is not merely a geographic or political notion. Come to think of it, I am Ukraine too, a tiny, one-fifty-millionth part of it, yet containing all of its DNA information.

V.Dibrova is the author of a collection of short stories Texts With and Without Titles (Molod’, Kyiv, 1990), Pisni Bitlz (Beatles Songbook, Alternatyva, Kyiv, 1991), Zbihovys’ka (Get-togethers, Krytyka, Kyiv, 1999), a prose collection and a play Vybhane (Kollekted, Krytyka, Kyiv, 2002), a collection of plays Dovkola stolu (Around the Table, Fact, Kyiv, 2005) a novel Andrijivs’kyj uzviz (Andrew’s Way, Fact, Kyiv, 2007) and Peltse, Pentameron (Northwestern University Press, 1996).