Rock, Paper, Grenade

A Novel

by Artem Chekh, translated by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum

Winner of the 2021 BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year Award

Rock, Paper, Grenade is a gritty and bald bildungsroman, a lilting picaresque of a life lived in the shadow of someone else’s war.

A realist depiction of Ukraine and the post Soviet world, this book offers an affecting yet honest look into the life of someone suffering from PTSD. It is a story of growing up without much hope for a better future, and yet intense moments of connection and kindness persist. Just when things begin to seem insurmountably dark, a friendship begins, a kind word is said, or a hand reaches out and opens the curtains, letting in a little light.

When Tymofiy is five years old, his small family in Cherkasy, Ukraine grows by one. Not with the birth of a baby sister or brother, but with the appearance of Felix—mentor and tormentor, enemy and friend—Tymofiy’s grandmother’s sometime-boyfriend. “Who are you?” Felix screams in the depths of a confused and drunken rage at all who cross his path, his memories of the Soviet-Afghan war clouding his eyes and senses. “Who are you?” Tymofiy asks himself as he drifts through the streets of his hometown, searching for love and protection, for a better, happier way of life.

Buying options

Available for pre-order. This item will be available on March 11, 2025.

Paperback

$15.36

$21.95

Publish Date: 2025-03-11

ISBN: 9781644214275

Pages: 208

Forthcoming

Ebook

Publish Date: 2025-01-07

ISBN: 9781644214282

Pages: 208

“Artem Chekh’s Rock, Paper, Grenade is a tough novel about a tough time in Ukraine, yet the author’s tense, electric prose — rendered with icy clarity by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum — communicates more than the harshness of the first post-Soviet decades. Chekh understands the lives shaped and misshaped by that era, cares about them, and we find ourselves caring as well. The people you meet here will stay with you.”

– Boris Dralyuk, translator of Isaac Babe, Andrey Kurkov, and other authors

“Artem Chekh’s novel is a brilliant study, written with a compelling combination of harshness and warmth, of the parallel growing pains of a society and of a child. Ukraine in the 1990s, newly independent, is learning, and often failing, to stand on its own two feet, just as the protagonist is learning what it means to transition from childhood to adulthood. And while all eyes are on the future, the trauma of the past, in the shape of Felix, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, still casts its shadow. And this is the second important message of Chekh’s book, a message that is painfully relevant to Ukraine today: war trauma, once it has taken root inside a person’s (or a society’s), soul, can never be expunged entirely. This is a vital book for anyone wishing to understand Ukraine, but its insights are relevant wherever the violence of the past intertwines with hopes for the future.”

– Uilleam Blacker, Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture, University College London

“'He’s like a guide… to the kingdom of the dead,' someone says, early on, of one of Rock, Paper, Grenade's many unforgettable characters. And Rock, Paper, Grenade is, in its own inimitable way, also a kind of guide—not to the kingdom of the dead, but to the blazing anti-kingdom of the living: not the story of kings, despots or heroes, but the story of soldiers and drunks, neighbors and grandmothers, starving dogs and beloved poisoned cats, in all their mortal vulnerability and complexity. A tender, sharply-imagined coming-of-age novel, full of clarity and bleak humor: a book as shrewd about historical damage as it is about personal repair; as piercing about post-Soviet loneliness as it is about our most ancient pull to salvage and connect. A funny, haunting and beautiful book.”

– Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart and the forthcoming novel Moderation (summer 2025)

ARTEM CHEKH is a Ukrainian author and soldier. He is the author of some sixteen books, including Absolute Zero, and his work has been translated into English, Polish, Czech, and Russian. Chekh is currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.