Literature in numbers

The awarding ceremony of “Golden Writers of Ukraine” took place in Fairmont hotel in Kyiv on November 24. This is the new initiative of the spouses Yurii and Tetiana Lohush, who have been organizing the well-known literary contest Coronation of the Word. The organizers (the Lohush spouses and the advisory committee) established the award to mark those novelists, whose works cumulatively have been published in 100,000 copies. The beginning of the year 2000 was chosen as the starting point. This year’s laureates are: Yurii Mushketyk, Anatolii Dimarov, Yurii Lohvyn, Myroslav Dochynets, Iren Rozdobudko, Yurii Vynnychuk, Vsevolod Nestaiko, Ivan Bilyk, Andrii Kurkov, Oleh Chornohuz, Mila Ivantsova, Andrii Kokotiukha, Liuko Dashvar, Lada Luzina, Simona Vilar, Serhii Zhadan, and Oksana Zabuzhko. Lina Kostenko did not accept this award. She, obviously, has a right to do so and does not have to explain anything to anyone. Especially given that the way of life that Kostenko has chosen long ago proved her attitude to various awards and ratings.

However, nowadays any initiative in support of the Ukrainian writers and Ukrainian book publishing is worthy of special attention, especially this one. Do you remember when was the last time such patriarchs as Yurii Mushketyk, Anatolii Dimarov, and Vsevolod Nestaiko were honored with some award? Besides, our literary environment is divided into “groups of generations,” which, to put it mildly, hardly communicate with each other. (As if there is a tremendous development of Ukrainian literature in the country.) And this event brought together representatives of various generations.

Since “Golden Writers of Ukraine” was organized for the first time, it naturally provoked mixed impressions and various questions. First of which is why the ceremony took place on The Day of commemorating the victims of man-made famine and political repressions. Second, why the list of laureates was so diverse in genres. Third, the novels by Maria Matios, Yurii Andrukhovych, Vasyl Shkliar, and Valerii Shevchuk were also published in more than 100,000 copies but this was not noted. Yurii LOHUSH gave answers to these questions to The Day:

“We organized this ceremony on the last Saturday of November because we wanted to commemorate Ukrainian writers who were killed and repressed. We wanted to do this together with modern writers and by doing so to demonstrate the continuity of generations. The event began with a moment of silence and on the big screen there appeared names of repressed and killed writers and poets. The concert compositions were also performed in the mood of that day.

“In the United States, for example, a book is called a bestseller if it was published in circulation of one million copies. (Calculations are made according to the population of the country.) In Ukraine this indicator is 100,000 copies. Our choice was based on data from the Book Chamber and publishers. We considered different genres of literature. If Coronation of the Word did not fill in the niche of popular literature, Ukrainians would only read books by Tatiana Ustinova, Daria Dontsova, and Boris Akunin. But now they also read books by Liuko Dashvar, Mila Ivantsova, and Andrii Kokotiukha. Works by Matios, Andrukhovych, Shevchuk, and Ivanchuk were also considered. But they could not come to the event, so we will give the awards to them next year. Of course, we could award them in absentia, but we wanted to do it publicly and solemnly. By the way, diplomats are also not random people at the ceremony. We paid a great deal of attention to the translations of the works by Ukrainian authors in European languages and their books published abroad.”