“The Ukraine is a startling and genuinely delightful set of stories from a writer now serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Artem Chapeye writes with warmth and brilliance, giving us ‘the Ukraine’ that in all its complexity, comedy, and beauty the author is now fighting to defend.”
– Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries
“Artem Chapeye shares with us a brilliant screenshot of Ukrainian life. This prose deserves all our attention.”
– Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees and Jimmy Hendrix Live in Lviv
“Going beyond headlines of war and strife, Artem Chapeye’s The Ukraine parts the veil to offer an earthy, humane look at the people and places of Ukraine. Chapeye is a Ukranian native and traveling journalist, and his compendium of short stories and “creative nonfiction” dates from 2010-2018, documenting local struggles (and in some cases, eerily presaging the future). The Ukraine‘s fiction entries focus on the quotidian: an old village woman venturing to Kyiv to sell potatoes while dodging nosy police officers; a former hoodlum dealing with the stresses of being a father; a downtrodden courier obsessed with acquiring the latest smartphone. For these characters, today is hard enough. These stories capture people’s travails with rough affection and humor. But the true meat of Chapeye’s powerful collection is its numerous creative nonfiction segments, chronicling his travels across Ukraine. His visits to regions already wracked by clashes between government forces; Russia-friendly separatists and corrupt local authorities provide sobering context for the current war with Russia. There are vibrant details, too, as of repairmen forced to use a rusty Russian motorcycle chain to replace the chain on a damaged Japanese motorcycle, and of a car battery that’s used to power a single light bulb for warmth in the dead of winter. Chapeye’s interviews and unlikely friendships with political pundits, brash truck drivers, hardscrabble country folk, and committed militants give a human face to Ukraine’s woes. Each subject is handed ample opportunity to voice their disappointments and fears about what Ukraine is and where it’s going. The result is an expansive, absorbing portrait of an imperfect land that’s worth cherishing for its complexity and contradictions. The Ukraine is a deft, humane, and empathetic text that contemplates a nation’s ever-shifting fortunes.”
– Ho Lin, Foreword Reviews (Starred Review)
“Artem Chapeye shares with us a brilliant screenshot of Ukrainian life. This prose deserves all our attention.”
– Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv
“The characters in “The Ukraine,” a collection of stories by Artem Chapeye, are tough, brave, funny, wounded people who find fellowship even though they’re not often looking for it… The beauty of “The Ukraine” rests foremost in its ability to transcend the narrative that history has forcibly imposed on it.”
– Talya Zax, Washington Post
“Chapeye blends memoir and fiction in this eclectic study of life in Ukraine. Written between 2010 and 2018, the stories offer candid, darkly funny observations on topics ranging from domestic squabbles to rural life and crime.”
– Ella Creamer, The Guardian
“Chapeye’s portrayals elevate and honor the seemingly mundane. His sheer perceptiveness renders each story deeply resonant.”
– Kate Tsurkan, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB)
“[A] fierce, kaleidoscopic blend of short stories and nonfiction… By scrutinizing Ukraine’s foibles alongside its strengths, Mr. Chapeye reveals why these proud, defiant people captured the world’s attention two years ago, and why they deserve continued support.”
– Matt Gallagher, The Wall Street Journal
“As Chapeye’s first book published in English, “The Ukraine” is notably far from an optimistic account of a united nation. What the book does do, however, is rally against viewing Ukrainians as simply numbers, fleeting headlines, or statistics on a screen – something that is needed more than ever. “The Ukraine” reminds the reader that behind every Ukrainian is a story.”
– Elsa Court, The Kyiv Independent
“Combining travel account, reportage and memoir, the collection wrestles with the multiple complexities, contradictions and tensions of a country that, like any other, has to reckon with the likes of poverty, discrimination and the insidious reach of clientelism.”
– Irish Times
“Pungent and (sometimes bleakly, sometimes spikily) comic character studies of a country that was on the eve of total war, the war that is the fruition and negation of all its innumerable complications and ambiguities. “I’m describing the moment at the bifurcation point,” Chapeye writes in his introduction— “when no one knows in which direction change will take us.” There’s novelistic irony and wit, sociological precision, and historical weight to each little world here, and all of it serves to produce something like a national “imagined community” that is totally disabused of any romance but also absolutely urgent. The title story, which brought Chapeye international attention when it was published in the New Yorker in 2022, is only a small sample of the book’s spirit: a disillusioned, tenacious humanism”
– Nicholas Dames, Public Books
