A novel that the Ukrainian writer Oleh Shynkarenko published in parts on the social network Facebook during the protests that happened in Maidan Square in order to avoid censorship it has recently been translated into English for the first time.
Journalist and author Oleh Shynkarenko began by writing about the vision of an alternate reality in which Russia has conquered Ukraine as protests continued their course in Kiev.
The magazine Index on Censorship ( "Censorship index”In Spanish), which published an excerpt from the first English translation in its latest magazine, said that the story originally came from a blog in 2010. In it, the author joked about the hope that there were radicals prepared to assassinate the then president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Because of these entries, Shynkarenko was later questioned by the security services and they found the entries that he posted on his blog deleted. The author believes that this was suppressed by the security services.
Later the author returned on a new platform, Facebook, to tell his story of a post-apocalyptic future, echoing the violence of the protests “Euromaidan” in 2013 and 2014 in 100-word fragments.
The writer, who now works for the Helksinki Ukraine Human Rights Union in Kiev, has turned the story into a novel, called Kaharlyk, which is scheduled for publication by the Kalyna Language Press.
Translator Steve Komarnychyj writes in an introduction to Index on Censorshyp, before the opening of the excerpt:
"Kaharlyk tells the story of a man who has lost his memory due to the Russian army using his brain to control satellites."
For its part, the extract begins as follows:
“The wind blows nonchalantly through every crevice. Traveling to Keiv on the main road, two identical 26-story buildings are visible in the distance from the road. They fight, the last two teeth in a jawbone. In this way the corpse of the city lays down, with its head facing south. Its only inhabitant is a 45-year-old mummified who wears elephant glasses. "
Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachel Jolley commented:
“When Maidan Square was filled with burning tires and protesters, Shynkarenko started to write some little thoughts about a Ukraine of the future. He scribbled these thoughts on Facebook posts that he shared with his friends after his personal blog entries were spooked, probably by official censors. "
“Facebook is a free space and less open to the whims of the authorities. Some of the scenes he wrote reflected the violence that was happening, and what had happened around him ... The dark world that the author has created is, without a doubt, drawn from the fears of the inhabitants of Oleh about the future of their country where he sees that freedom restrictions are being carried out with increasing force "