Andrea Chalupa’s Orwell and the Refugees traces the amazing connection between George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm and Ukrainian refugees in the displaced persons camps of postwar Germany and Austria. Animal Farm carries the message of hope that someone in the West knew the truth about the Soviet Union, that someone understood the unimaginable horrors Ukrainians and others endured behind the Iron Curtain. When Andrea Chalupa’s grandfather Olexji Keis, her grandmother Alexandra and uncle Vitalij immigrated to the United States in 1951, one of their few possessions was a Ukrainian translation of Orwell’s masterpiece Animal Farm. It had been published in Munich in 1947 by a group of Ukrainian refugees at a small press called Prometej. The remarkable story of the collaboration between the world-renowned novelist George Orwell and these Ukrainian refugees is the focus of Chalupa’s book Orwell and the Refugees. After spending years writing Animal Farm, George Orwell could not find a publisher brave enough to publish it during World War II since it was viewed as anti-Soviet satire. The book was not welcome in the literary world because the West needed Stalin to fight Hitler. As well, many leading intellectuals still believed in the Russian Revolution. Orwell […]

In this edition of Knyzka Corner, we look at Orphanage 41 by Victor Malarek. Although Victor Malarek has written six non-fiction books, Orphanage 41 is his first novel. Mykola Yashan, the 19-year old protagonist of this novel, is forced into a voyage of nightmarish self-discovery. After the sudden death of his parents in an automobile crash, his entire world falls apart, “Because everything I’ve been told, all I’ve ever known, has turned out to be a big lie.” (p. 48) Mykola leads a very sheltered life. He is a third year student in civil engineering at the University of Alberta. As an only child, he is the “centre of his mother’s universe,” (p. 12), but he has a very complicated relationship with his father, Dr. Stepan Yashan, “a respected scholar in the expat Ukrainian community.” Mykola cannot understand why his father resents him so much. After his parents’ death, Mykola discovers a shocking secret. He was adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine. This discovery forces him to start a search for answers about his past. Mykola begins his search with his 1993 adoption papers signed by Natalka Matlinsky, director of Orphanage 41 in Lviv. As Mykola begins to follow the […]

SLIDING ON THE SNOW STONE. Szpuk, Andy. That Right Publishing, 2011. 238 p. ISBN 1466305681   When Andy Szpuk asked his father about his earliest memory, he replied, “Russian soldiers carrying corpses away.” After hearing about his father’s life, Szpuk decided that this story must be told. Sliding on the Snow Stone gives readers a glimpse into the incredible determination that kept the Ukrainian nation alive throughout centuries of foreign oppression. As Sliding on the Snow Stone begins, it is 1932 and five-year old Stepan realizes that his tiny village near the town of Vinnitsya has changed forever. Soviet soldiers are picking up the bodies of his starving neighbours on the road.  Stepan’s description is heart wrenching, “They began by taking away all our grain, and once they’d done that, they stripped rural Ukraine of all its food produce.  There was nothing left to eat.  Of course, back then I didn’t know all that.  I was just a boy.” Stepan’s family manages to survive during the Holodomor because of their cow’s milk. However, all around them people are dying and eating anything they can find – even human flesh. Meanwhile, Soviet soldiers are freely eating and drinking.  The Ukrainian will […]