page_title: Contemporary Ukrainian literature
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Contemporary Ukrainian literature / Features
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Jurij Andruchovyč (* 1960), ukrainský spisovatel English: Yuri Andrukhovych (b. 1960), ukrainian writer
context_page_description: Contemporary Ukrainian literature is a notion referred to Ukrainian literature of the past several decades. Most often 1991 as a year of Ukrainian independence is considered as a start of the contemporary Ukrainian literature as from that year on the literary censorship of the Soviet Union ceased to exist and writers were able to deviate from the official socialist realism style. Principal changes took place in Ukrainian literature already in the years of Perestroika and especially after the Chernobyl disaster. Some researchers consider that contemporary Ukrainian literature started from the 1970-s after the generation of the sixtiers.
  Due to the increased freedom and openness of the Ukrainian society to foreign influences and much broader contacts with literatures of other countries contemporary Ukrainian literature is different from the literature of soviet and classical period. It turns to the previously forbidden topics, using new styles, diversity and mixing of genres, shocking effects and reflecting upon social problems and historical memory.
context_section_description: Modernist tradition in Ukrainian literature was raptured by extermination of many Ukraininan writers in 1930-es. A Soviet period of considerable cultural isolation followed. This led to the fact some contemporary Ukrainian authors write in classical, modernist or postmodernist styles coming in terms with the historic gap each on their own terms.
  Many works of contemporary writers are concentrated on darker sides of human life, violence and crisis. This came about as a reaction to the false and compulsory optimism of the official socialist realist literature.
  There are numerous literary festivals in Ukraine, most important are the Lviv international literary festival, Meridian Czernowitz and Kyivski lavry.
  Some Ukrainian authors write in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian called surzhyk (Bohdan Zholdak, Les Podervianskyi, Volodymyr Dibrova, Myhaylo Brynyh) using it to create a comic effect as this is the language of the marginalized.
  A number of writers of Ukraine write in Russian language. Andriy Kurkov is the best known of them. Also a great number of contemporary Russian science fiction writers originally come from Ukraine or still live there (H. L. Oldie, Alexander Zorich, Yuri Nikitin, Andrey Valentinov, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko and Vladimir Arenev).
caption: Yuri Andrukhovych
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