Serhiy Zhadan

Ukraine

About

Serhiy Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, translator, musician, and civic activist, born in 1974 in Starobilsk, in eastern Ukraine. He studied Ukrainian-German philology and completed postgraduate research on Ukrainian avant-garde poet Mykhailo Semenko. Since the early 1990s, Zhadan has been a prominent figure in the cultural life of Kharkiv, the city where he has lived and worked for much of his adult life. His writing captures the experiences of post-Soviet Ukraine, particularly the lives of young people and marginalised communities navigating political upheaval, economic hardship, and social change. His acclaimed novels include Voroshilovgrad (published in English as The Orphanage is a different work; Voroshilovgrad has also appeared in English under its original title), Depeche Mode, Mesopotamia, and The Orphanage. His poetry collections include The Life of Maria, Templars, and Antenna. Known for his energetic language, dark humour, and vivid depictions of eastern Ukrainian life, Zhadan blends the personal with the political. His work has received numerous international honours, including the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the Brücke Berlin Prize, and the 2022 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 2025, he received Austria’s State Prize for European Literature. Alongside his literary career, Zhadan is the frontman of the bands Zhadan and the Dogs and Mannerheim Line. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has also been active in humanitarian volunteering and, in 2024, joined the Ukrainian military.

Books on TheBookRoads

All genres Historical Fiction Fiction Short Stories

All themes War & Conflict

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The Orphanage

Set in eastern Ukraine during the war in Donbas, The Orphanage follows Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher who has spent his life avoiding politics and keeping his distance from the conflicts around him. When fighting reaches a neighbouring city, he must cross the front line to retrieve his thirteen-year-old nephew, Sasha, from a boarding school that has become increasingly dangerous. What should be a straightforward journey turns into a harrowing passage through a landscape devastated by shelling, military checkpoints, and collapsing infrastructure. As Pasha encounters soldiers, displaced civilians, and people struggling to survive, his familiar world becomes unrecognisable. With each step, he is forced to reconsider his loyalties, his responsibilities, and what it means to belong to a country at war. Written with stark lyricism and an unflinching eye for everyday suffering, Zhadan’s novel portrays the human cost of armed conflict. Beyond the physical dangers, it explores indifference, moral responsibility, and the difficult realisation that remaining neutral may no longer be possible. The Orphanage won the 2022 EBRD Literature Prize.

Arabesques

Set in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, during Russia’s full-scale invasion, Arabesques is a collection of interconnected stories about ordinary people trying to preserve their humanity in extraordinary circumstances. Through intimate snapshots of daily life, Serhiy Zhadan portrays a city transformed by war, where familiar routines have been disrupted by bombardment, loss, and the constant threat of death. The characters navigate weddings, love affairs, funerals, and reunions with loved ones returning from the front. Volunteers deliver humanitarian aid, families struggle to protect elderly relatives, and wounded soldiers attempt to rebuild their lives. Their experiences reveal the fragile connections that sustain communities even as violence reshapes the world around them. Returning to characters and settings from his earlier works, including Mesopotamia and The Orphanage, Zhadan captures both the vulnerability and quiet resilience of Ukrainian society. With understated compassion, he explores grief, solidarity, memory, and the persistence of everyday life amid destruction. Arabesques is a powerful literary portrait of a community determined to endure.

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