Марія Матіос. Солодка Даруся

Марія Матіос

Work proposed for translation:

Солодка Даруся
A novel (2004)
Length: 208 pp.
Copyright: Publisher: store@ababahalamaha.com

Maria Matios (born 1959) is a well-known contemporary Ukrainian writer. A philologist by education, she worked for a long time as a librarian and journalist. She is the author of a number of poetry and prose books that have been translated into various languages around the world. In 2004, her most famous novel, Sweet Darusia, was published and awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. Her other novels, which were also quite successful, followed: Beech Land (2019), Mums (2023), and A Woman Can Be Trusted (2024). Maria Matios’ prose intertwines historical and feminist themes. Matios’ women talk about their psychological and physical experiences of survival in times of great social upheaval, without avoiding sensitive and uncomfortable topics. Another central theme around which most of the writer’s plots unfold is the dramatic history of the Ukrainian resistance movement, which refuses to stop fighting the totalitarian regime even after the end of World War II and the complete occupation of Ukraine. 

The novel Sweet Darusia: a drama of three live is a dramatic story about the tragedy of human destiny against the backdrop of historical vicissitudes, social cruelty, and political changes in Bukovina in the last century. The plot centres on the life of Darusia, a woman who suffers from severe headaches and whom her fellow villagers consider mute and insane. However, she can actually speak and only lives a kind of inner life unknown to others, behaving in a way that seems rather strange to outsiders. She buries herself in the ground, wades waist-deep into icy water, dresses trees in ribbons, and even lives peacefully with a man who stubbornly tries to “cure” her. The writer takes a retrospective look at the tragic events in Darusia’s family, which coincide with the constant change of power in Bukovina before and after the Second World War and which partly explain the reasons for the woman’s strange behaviour.