Serhiy Zhadan


Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan is a Ukrainian writer, musician, translator, and social activist.
In early June 2024, Zhadan posted on his Facebook page that he had joined the 13th "Khartia" Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine which has been in active combat.
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Life and career

Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast in Ukraine. He graduated from H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University in 1996 with a thesis on the work of Mykhaylo Semenko and the Ukrainian Futurist writers of the 1920s. He then spent three years as a graduate student of philology, and taught Ukrainian and world literature from 2000 to 2004. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer.
Starting his career in 1990, his verses revolutionized Ukrainian poetry: they were less sentimental, reviving the style of 1920s Ukrainian avant-garde writers like Semenko or Johanssen. And they drew upon his homeland: the industrial landscapes of East Ukraine. Voroshilovgrad tells a story of a young man called Herman who left his home city Starobilsk but who has to come back to his native lands to protect something that belongs to him. Based on the book, Yaroslav Lodygin directed the award-winning movie The Wild Fields.
Zhadan is an internationally known Ukrainian writer, with 12 books of poetry and 7 novels, and winner of more than a dozen literary awards. In March 2008, the Russian translation of his novel Anarchy in the UKR made the shortlist of the National Bestseller Prize. It was also a contender for "Book of the Year" at the 2008 Moscow International Book Exhibition. In 2009, he won the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Prize. In 2012, Gunshot and Knife won Ukrainian rating "Book of the Year" for fiction. His 2010 novel Voroshylovhrad won him the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland, BBC Ukrainian's "Book of the Decade" award and Brücke Berlin Prize. His selected poems Dynamo Kharkiv won Ukrainian "Book of the Year." His book Mesopotamia won the Angelus literature prize in 2015, the Award of the President of Ukraine "Ukrainian Book of the Year" in 2016.
From 2016 to 2019, he was a member of the Taras Shevchenko National Award Committee of Ukraine.
Zhadan has translated poetry from German, English, Belarusian, and Russian, from such poets as Paul Celan and Charles Bukowski. His own works have been translated into German, English, Estonian, French, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Georgian, Belarusian, Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Czech.
His translated poetry has appeared in Ambit, Asymptote, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, The Manchester Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry International, Poetry International Web, Plume., The Threepenny Review, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
In August 2024 Zhadan was featured in a tv commercial for McDonald's in Ukraine. He wrote for and recited a poem in the commercial.

Theater and multimedia projects

His novel Anthem of Democratic Youth has been adapted for the stage and performed at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv.
Since 2004, Zhadan has worked with Yara Arts Group from La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, contributing to the shows: "Koliada: Twelve Dishes", "Underground Dreams", "Hitting Bedrock" and "Radio 477!". Zhadan and the Dogs appeared at La MaMa in Yara's "1917–2017: Tychyna, Zhadan and the Dogs,", directed by Virlana Tkacz, which received two New York Innovative Theatre Awards, for best music and best musical.
His poems "Spy," "Chaplain" and "Needle," translated by Tkacz and Phipps were part of "Blind Spot," an installation by Mykola Ridnyi and Serhii Zhadan for the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale May–July 2015.

Music projects

Zhadan collaborated with Kharkiv-based music band Luk. Most of Luk's Ukrainian-language songs included lyrics based on works by Zhadan.
The tribute album Khor monholskykh militsioneriv was released in 2008. The songs include lyrics by Zhadan, performed by Kharkiv musicians.
Since 2007, Zhadan has collaborated with another Kharkiv band, Dogs in Outer Space, now known as Zhadan and the Dogs. They have released the albums The Army Sports Club, Weapons of the Proletatiat, Fight for Her, Dogs, Madonna, and Lead
In 2021, Zhadan recorded a full-length album titled "Fokstroty" with Yuriy Gurzhy, a Ukrainian-born, Berlin-based musician, DJ, and producer.

Political activism and military service

Zhadan's active involvement in Ukrainian politics began while a student and has continued throughout the various political crises in Ukraine. In 1992, he was one of the organizers of Kharkiv neo-futuristic literary group "The Red Thistle". He participated in the 2004 Orange Revolution demonstrations against corruption and voter intimidation in the presidential run-off elections, was the commandant of a tent camp in Kharkiv. The protests resulted in a revote ordered by Ukraine's Supreme Court. He has repeatedly expressed sympathy for anarchists, and in many of his works there are "left" motifs.
In 2013, he was a member of the coordination council of Euromaidan Kharkiv, part of the nationwide protests and violent clashes with police. In the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution, which resulted in Russian-backed President Yanukovych’s resignation, he was assaulted outside the Kharkiv administration building.
Since 2014, Zhadan has made numerous visits to the front lines of the Eastern Donbas region involved in armed conflict with Russian separatists. In February 2017, he co-founded Serhiy Zhadan Charitable Foundation to provide humanitarian aid to front-line cities.
When asked, Zhadan has described his political commitments in the following manner:
After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhadan remained in his hometown of Kharkiv, helping to organize humanitarian aid. Early June 2024 Zhadan posted on his Facebook page that he had joined the 13th "Khartia" Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine. This unit took part in various battles of the Russian invasion.

Critical reception

Rostislav Melnikov and Yuriy Tsaplin of the New Literary Review wrote in 2007:
Zhadan's prose is so poetic, his free verse so prosaic. It is difficult to assign a genre to his work: memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation – or a mixture of all these, centered on the themes my generation and our epoch.

Kirill Ankudinov, writing for Vzglyad.ru in June 2008, said:
There is no summarizing the spicy, hot, sweet, vicious improvisations of Serhiy Zhadan – this is verbal jazz. When you read him, you fear for contemporary Russian literature: of those now writing in the Russian language, there is none among them who is so infernally free.

On 5 March 2022, the Polish Academy of Sciences nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In July 2024 Zhadan received the title of honorary professor of philosophy from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Germany.

Books by Serhiy Zhadan published in English translation

' by Serhiy Zhadan, translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky,.   by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes 2023.The Orphanage: A Novel, translated by Reilly Costigan‑Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, A new orthography : poems, Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2020. : Selected Poems by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps,.
  • ' by Serhiy Zhadan, prose translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes & Isaac Stackhouse Wheele poetry translated by Viralna Tkacz and Wanda Phipps,. Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes, Depeche Mode by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Miroslav Shkandrij. A Harvest Truce: a play by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Nina Murray

In other languages

  • Big Mac — Poland, Czarne, 2005.
  • Depeche Mode — Poland, Czarne, 2006.
  • Die Geschichte der Kultur zu Anfang des Jahrhunderts — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2006.
  • Depeche Mode — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2007.
  • Hymn demokratycznej młodzieży — Poland, Czarne, 2008.
  • Hymne der Demokratischen Jugend — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2009.
  • Anarchy in the UKR — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2007.
  • Big Mäc — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2011.
  • Die Erfindung des Jazz im Donbass — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2012.
  • Voroshilovgrad — Ukraine, 2011, 2012.
  • Vorosilovgrád — Hungary, Európa, 2012.
  • La Route du Donbass — France, Noir sur Blanc, 2013.
  • Woroszyłowgrad — Poland, Czarne, 2013.
  • Mezopotamia — Poland, Czarne, 2014.
  • Mesopotamien — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2015.
  • Ze života Marie — Czech Republic, Větrné mlýny, 2015.
  • Варашылаўград — Belarus, Логвінаў, 2016.
  • Džezs pār Donbasu — Latvia, Jāņa Rozes Apgāds, 2016.
  • Fire Arms and Knives — Russia, 2016.
  • La strada del Donbas — Spain, Voland, 2016.
  • Warum ich nicht im Netz bin: Gedichte und Prosa aus dem Krieg — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2016.
  • Drohobycz — Poland, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2018.
  • Hymna demokratickej mládeže — Slovakia, OZ Brak, 2018.
  • Internat — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2018.
  • Poems — Belarus, 2018.
  • Vorosjylovhrad — Netherlands, De Geus, 2018.
  • Vorošilovgrad — Slovenia, Beletrina, 2018.
  • ვოროშილოვგრადი — Georgia, ინტელექტი, 2018.
  • Internat — Poland, Czarne, 2019.
  • What we live for, what we die for — USA, 2019.
  • Antena — Poland, Warstwy, 2020.
  • Antenne — Germany, Suhrkamp, 2020.
  • The Orphanage — Denmark, Jensen & Dalgaard I/S, 2020.
  • Depeche Mode — Estonia, 2020.
  • Anthem of democratic youth — France, Espace Instant, 2020.
  • Internatas – Lithuania, Kitos knygos, 2021.
  • Himmel über Charkiw. Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg - Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2022.

Works

Poetry

Quotations, 1995.General Judas, 1995.Pepsi,.The very best poems, psychedelic stories of fighting and other bullshit: Selected Poems, 1992–2000, 2000.Ballads about War and Reconstruction, 2001.The History of Culture at the Beginning of This Century, UkSSR, 2004.Maradona, 2007.Ethiopia, 2009.Lili Marlene, 2009.Fire Arms and Knives, 2012.Life of Maria, 2015.Templars, 2016.Antenna, 2018.List of Ships, 2019.Psalm to Aviation, 2021.What We Live For, What We Die For: Selected Poems, 2019.How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems, 2023.

Prose

Big Mac, 2003.Depeche Mode, 2004; Glagoslav Publications Limited, 2013, Anarchy in the UKR, 2005.Anthem of Democratic Youth, 2006.Big Mac², 2007.Voroshilovgrad, 2010; Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016,.Big Mac and Other Stories, 2011.Mesopotamia, 2014.The Orphanage, 2017.

Compilations

Capital, 2006 — includes everything but The History of Culture at the Beginning of the Century, Big Mac, and Maradona.

Anthologized poetry

Stanislav+2, 2001.Ch-Time ''– Verses on Chechnya and Not Only, 2001.We Will Not Die in Paris, 2002.The History of Culture, 2004.The UnKnown Ukraine'', 2005.

Awards