Forgottenness - A Novel

Winner of the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award and the German Usedom Prize, Forgottenness movingly—and unflinchingly—illuminates the intricacies of the Ukrainian experience in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An exceedingly anxious young narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder and alcoholism to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace and companionship in researching the historical figure of Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882–1931), a social and political activist of Polish descent who played a pivotal role in the struggle for Ukrainian independence—and just so happened to struggle with hypochondria. Through a series of mesmerizing digressions, the narrator’s own family saga is told in parallel with Lypynskyi’s, culminating in “an impressively sincere self-inquiry about identity”?(Jury of the Usedom Prize, led by Olga Tokarczuk). Shot through with wry humor and brilliantly translated by Zenia Tompkins, this urgent work announces Tanja Maljartshuk as a major voice in world literature.