Ukrainian Voices Book Set

1. Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko
2. Hardly Ever Otherwise by Maria Matios
3. Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk by Yuri Vynnychuk
4. The Frontier edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
5. Absolute Zero by Artem Chekh

Kobzar is considered Shevchenko's masterpiece, having worked nearly 25 years on it. The orginal work included eight poems, but additions were made with each new edition. Shevchenko's work is now hailed as one of the foundational pieces of literature in influencing the Ukranian identity and literary world. 

From one of Ukraine's most prominent writers of modern day, Hardly Ever Otherwise is a story about several families during the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As the saga unfolds, Matios expertly demonstrates why events must follow a specific course, her multi-tiered plot meditating on the nature of cause and effect. 

Yuri Vynnychuk is an iconoclastic satirist and a master of the short story. A product of the time he grew up in, his versatile writing is often abrasive and subversive, intending to shock readers while needling at social constructs and establishments. Both bittersweet and utterly shocking, Vynnychuk's vast corpus examines the taboo in a way no one else can.

The Frontier is a bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry that embraces the Ukrainian identity from locally- and internatially-known poets like Vasyl Holoborodko, Olena Herasymyuk, Myroslav Laiuk, Anna Chromova, and Taras Malkovych. The poetry inside responds to the challenges of the time by creating a new poetic standard, radicalizing technique and language. 

Absolute Zero is Artem Chekh's first book to be published in English. The story is a first-person account of a soldier's life, based on Chekh's experience serving in the war in Donbas. The novel focuses on the harsh, mundane realities soldiers live such as isolation and the constant threat of attack rather than the war itself.