YURI ANDRUKHOVYCH

YURI ANDRUKHOVYCH was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. In 1985, together with Viktor Neborak and Oleksandr Irvanets, he founded the popular literary performance group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesque-Bluster-Buffoonery). Andrukhovych has published four poetry books: Nebo i ploshchi (Sky and Squares, 1985), Seredmistia (Downtown, 1989), Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny (Exotic Birds and Plants, 1991; new editions 1997 and 2002), and Pisni dlia mertvoho pivnia (Songs for a Dead Rooster, 2004).

Andrukhovych’s novels Rekreatsiï (Recreations, 1992), Moskoviada (The Moscoviad, 1993), Perverziia (Perverzion, 1996), Dvanadtsiat obruchiv (Twelve Circles, 2003), and Taiemnytsia (Mystery, 2007) have had a great impact on readers in Ukraine. His book Leksykon intymnykh mist (Lexicon of Intimate Cities, 2011) is an experimental work of fiction structured as a cycle of stories set in different cities, arranged in alphabetical order and his most recent book, Tut pokhovanyi Fantomas (Fantomas Was Buried Here, 2015), is a collection of prose miniatures. Andrukhovych also writes literary essays, which have been collected in Dezoriientatsiia na mistsevosti (Disorientation on Location, 1999) and Dyiavol khovaietsia v syri (The Devil Is in the Cheese, 2006). Together with the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk, he co-authored Moia Ievropa (My Europe, 2000 and 2001).

Yuri Andrukhovych’s books have been translated and published in Poland, Germany, Canada, the U.S., Hungary, Finland, Russia, Serbia, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, France, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania.

Andrukhovych is the winner of five prestigious international literary awards: the Herder Prize (Alfred Toepfer Stiftung, Hamburg, 2001); the Erich-Maria Remarque Peace Prize (Osnabrück, 2005); the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding (2006); the Angelus Central European Literary Award (Wroclaw, 2006); and the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (Bremen, 2014). In 2016, he was awarded the Goethe Medal by the German government.

English-language translations of Andrukhovych’s novels have been published as Recreations (1998), The Moscoviad (2008), Perverzion (2005), and Twelve Circles (2015). A selection of his essays in English translation, entitled My Final Territory, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2017.

Yuri Andrukhovych’s events in the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series, entitled Werwolf Sutra, took place in October 2009.