Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Editor’s Welcome

insight into life. I would call Malyarchuk Chekhovian for her style and the subtle psychological depth that remains a constant in her writing. We’ve got two tales from her in this issue: her story “The Demon of Hunger” explores the author’s childhood in themysteriousCarpathianMountains, and the prose piece “I Wish I had a Tail” is indicative of Malyarchuk’s penchant for narrative experimentation. 8 Yuri Andrukhovych (Юрій Андрухович, born in Ivano- Frankivsk, 1960), co-founder of the Bu-Ba-Bu literary performance group in 1985, is Ukraine’s leading postmodernist writer and is best known for his novels Recreations (1992), TheMoscoviad (1993), Perverzion (1996), and Twelve Circles (2003). Andrukhovych is also well known throughout Europe for his thoughtful and provocative literary, cultural, and autobiographical essays examining his own and his country’s place in historical and present- day Europe. His essay “ Carpathologia Comosphilica ” comprises one of his more fanciful explorations of the geography of his native Carpathian Mountain region on a mythic level. We’re pleased to feature this as our first essay in the new Trafika Europe: Essays and Reviews section on

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