In the second decade of the twenty-first century there has been a noticeable increase in attention accorded to post-Soviet Ukrainian literature, one that has been accompanied by a publication surge in English-language translations of literary works by today's leading Ukrainian authors. It is thus welcome to see the recent publication of scholarly works that investigate this literature, the latest of which is Maria Rewakowicz's Ukraine's Quest for Identity. In her monograph, Rewakowicz analyzes what she considers to be the most important works of literature produced in the first twenty years of Ukrainian independence within various contexts, including feminism, abnormality and illness, language, popular genres, and regionalism. Rewakowicz examines her chosen works through the prism of identity formation and relies heavily on the notion of hybridity, as conceptualized in postcolonial studies, in order to connect a poetics of hybridity to a politics of identity construction.
In her opening chapter, Rewakowicz lists and briefly summarizes some of the approaches to contemporary Ukrainian literature that have been proposed by scholars since the country's independence. In it she initially criticizes Vitaly Chernetsky's application of Fredric Jameson's concept of national allegory to the Ukrainian post-independence literary process before later crediting Chernetsky for allowing texts from that process to be considered as both national allegories and as postmodern texts. This notion, in fact, is an important characteristic of Ukrainian postmodernism and one of its exemplary features, and it is laudable that Rewakowicz sheds light on this idea at the onset of her analysis.
Rewakowicz's chapters on feminism, abnormality/illness, and language take on concepts that have been deemed crucial to post-Soviet Ukrainian literature in earlier publications studying that literature. When expanding upon existing studies regarding the first two concepts, by bringing additional works into her discussion, she uncovers nuances in these themes and confirms their importance and lasting presence as key issues pervading contemporary Ukrainian texts. The innovations she offers regarding the issue of language in these literary works are truly welcoming as she brings up a matter that has taken on increased resonance since war broke out between Ukraine and Russia in 2014—the question regarding the inclusion of Russian-language Ukrainian writers in delineations of today's Ukrainian literature. To that end, the presence or absence of Ukrainian traditions, contemporary topics, and landscapes in works by writers such as Andrey Kurkov and Maryna and Serhiy Diachenko are dealt with engagingly and informatively by Rewakowicz.
Where this monograph is especially useful is in its focus on the concepts of regionalism and popular genres. Local identification by authors is a prominent feature of today's Ukrainian literature. It is a result of the decentralization of the Ukrainian literary structures that has been developing since independence and is a reflection of how the country's diversity enriches its culture today. Rewakowicz's attention to popular literature is also novel and refreshing. She points out that genres such as the detective novel expand the viability of the Ukrainian language and keenly observes that a gradual and concerted effort by writers to generate popular genre Ukrainian-language works, in order to stave off foreign pulp fiction publications flooding the market since independence, has produced books whose popularity has rendered them with enhanced power when probing Ukraine's past in constructing its present identity.
Ukraine's Quest for Identity is a very valuable contribution to the study of contemporary Ukrainian literature. Its wide scope allows it to expand upon important topics on the subject that have been introduced in the past and to bring up issues that evolve as Ukraine approaches it its third decade of independence. It is because of the breadth of its scope that it is surprising that such prominent authors of the past twenty years as Valerii Shevchuk, Oleh Lysheha, and Ihor Rymaruk are, at best, mentioned in passing. Nonetheless, Rewakowicz's analysis of the works she does focus on leads her to accurately conclude that plural and hybrid identities—national, ethnic, regional, class, and gender—in post-Soviet Ukraine are reflected by its literature and that this literature, in turn, helps to form these identities. Her well-researched and engagingly organized monograph will be a very helpful tool for the growing number of people who study contemporary Ukraine and sense the importance that its literature holds in understanding the country's complex identity today.
