Signals of Being, or Verbum Caro Factum Est: A Play in Three Acts (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature) - Hardcover

Rafeyenko, Volodymyr

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067430263X ISBN 13: 9780674302631

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2025

Synopsis

In the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the residents of a small co-op community outside of Kyiv find themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances, surrounded by occupying Russian forces. Pinched between Bucha and Borodianka, cut off from aid, and unable to escape, their attempts at survival rely on connection: a cellphone signal in the forest, their bonds with each other, and, ultimately, new understandings of what it means to be Ukrainian. Weaving Shakespeare with both Ukrainian literary classics and contemporary works, Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s Signals of Being stages a captivating dramatic interpretation of a country at war.

About this title

About the Authors

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary and film critic. Although he initially wrote and published in Russian, his novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love was his first written in Ukrainian. It was nominated for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Volodymyr Korolenko Prize for the novel Brief Farewell Book and the Visegrad Eastern Partnership Literary Award for the novel The Length of Days.

Mark Andryczyk teaches Ukrainian literature and is Associate Research Scholar in the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction and has published translations of numerous Ukrainian poets and writers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067430263X
• ISBN 13: 9780674302631
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 156