In “The Story of Sofia”, the concluding volume of the Amadoka epic, Sofia Andrukhovych brings together all the threads of the great trilogy and impressively shows that we can only understand Ukraine’s present if we know its history. The book tells of a passionate, secret love in the shadow of world politics and of the Ukrainian struggle against Soviet-Russian superiority. At the center of the intelligentsia in Kyiv in the 1920s are the poet Mykola Zerov, his wife Sofia and her lover, the author, scientist and Soviet-German double agent Viktor Petrov. Under Stalinism, “Soviet Ukraine” not only falls victim to a murderous famine, its flourishing literary life is also mercilessly destroyed.

Sofia Andrukhovych was born in 1982 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine,

was born. She lives in Kyiv as a writer, translator and essayist. In 2024, Sofia, her translator Alexander Kratochvil and her translator Maria Weissenböck were awarded the “International Hermann Hesse Prize” by the Calwer Hermann Hesse Foundation for the three-volume German translation of the novel “Amadoka” (2020).

Moderation: Gun-Britt Kohler

A cooperation between the Bremen Chamber of Employees, the University of Oldenburg, the Literaturhaus Oldenburg and the globale° festival as part of the Odessa Days 2024