Novel
The City
Місто
Valerian Pidmohylny · 1928
Synopsis
Stepan Radchenko, a young man from the countryside, arrives in Kyiv in the early twenties to study, determined to conquer the city rather than despise it. Lodging with a shopkeeper, he becomes the lover of his wife, Tamara, then passes from one woman to another, Nadiika, Zoska, Rita, begins to write and makes his way in the literary world, gradually shedding his ties and his scruples.
Context
The novel was published in 1928 in Kharkiv by Knyhospilka, and a Russian translation was published as early as 1930 for the whole Soviet Union. Nourished by the French novel that its author translated, it is often compared to Bel-Ami, and opens with two epigraphs, one drawn from the Talmud on man as half beast, half angel, the other from Anatole France. Rehabilitated in 1956, its author was nevertheless not republished until 1991; the book appeared in German in 2022, in English in 2025.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, told almost entirely from the hero's point of view, whose justifications we hear; it can be read without knowing the Ukrainian context.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first great urban novel of Ukrainian literature and as its author's masterpiece, it is studied in Ukrainian schools.
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