Alexey Sevruk’s novel “Evropanka” (“The European Woman”) is a remarkable attempt to bring the experience of the Ukrainian countryside and its confrontation with the traumas of the 20th century closer to Czech readers. Written in a style inspired by the stream of consciousness and the oral storytelling tradition (skaz), the novel gives voice to a female narrator whose personal story intertwines with the collective memory of the “bloodlands.” Sevruk rejects the traditional Czech myth of the “little man” and instead finds dignity in the simplicity of everyday life and in resilience against the violence of history. The linguistic and structural boldness of the novel attests to the author’s exceptional literary talent and makes “The European Woman” an important contribution to the rethinking of Central European identity at a time when Europe’s relationship with Ukraine is being redefined.
Alexey Sevruk (*1983 in Kiev, Ukraine) is a poet, novelist, journalist and translator. He has lived in the Czech Republic since the age of twelve, having moved there with his parents as part of the government’s programme to repatriate Volhynian Czechs and their relatives. He studied Ukrainian and Slavonic studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University. He has translated the works of Yurii Andrukhovych and Serhiy Zhadan into Czech and Patrik Ouředník’s experimental prose Europeana into Ukrainian. As the editor-in-chief of a literary monthly, he has also written for several domestic and foreign journals, magazines and anthologies. He works as an archivist at the Museum of Czech Literature.
