Presentation of a New Novel by Vasyl Makhno: The Angel and the Donkey: With Poems About Fire and Water

The presentation will explore Makhno’s multilayered novel about journeys and returns, memory and creativity, history and personal experience. Set between Buchach and Jerusalem, the novel weaves together the lives of writers, philosophical reflection, parable-like narratives, and a novel-within-a-novel structure. The central character, writer Viktor Preisner, lives on the outskirts of Riverhead and has spent years working on a novel about Gospel times. Two small figurines—an angel and a donkey, souvenirs from Jerusalem—sit on his desk. After a devastating storm, he discovers the same figurines in a ruined house, raising questions about the fate of his manuscript and the meaning of memory, loss, and return.

The novel has been described by Ukrainian literary critics as a meditation on memory, creativity, migration, history, loss, and the elemental forces of fire and water, as well as a work that expands the possibilities of contemporary Ukrainian émigré literature.

The novel The Angel and the Donkey: With Poems About Fire and Water is stylistically diverse. Yet this rich palette of styles is precisely what makes it a distinctive hallmark of Vasyl Makhno’s unique voice – a mature master of prose.

— Ihor Nabytovych, Zbruch

The Angel and  the Donkey transforms from an émigré novel about a Ukrainian in America into an illustration of a new mode of existence for Ukrainian literature.

— Oksana Shchur, Ukrainska Pravda

At the level of plot, The Angel and the Donkey is a novel about two writers connected by the town of Buchach in the Ternopil region and by life trajectories that share striking similarities. Yet, contrary to what one might expect, the novel is not primarily about the act of writing itself. Rather, in a broader sense, it is a work about life.

—Zoya Shevchuk, Krytyka

The book launch will be in Ukrainian.

Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

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Watch the streamed event here