“There are a lot of Russisms in the language of the characters. But also words borrowed from German, French, Turkish, Latin and other languages, used by the then educated people. Therefore, in translation, I relied on the stylistics of the authors of Vynnychenko’s and Kotsiubynskyi’s eras. I used Hrinchenko’s dictionary as a base. I checked every word against this dictionary. It’s a hell of a job. And I checked the scientific terms, relying on a scientific encyclopedia of 1930s, which had been published in Kolomyia. It was written by emigrants who had fled the Bolshevik regime in Eastern Ukraine,” the translator Andrii Pavlyshyn says.

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By Sviatoslav Czyruk

06.11.2018

I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time, so I can’t just talk about it as another novel, accidentally purchased at a fair and read among other things. No, I’ve been waiting for this text as a hunter for a prey, as a dog for a bone, and finally as a Chinese for his enemy corpse, because I’ve begun to hate it a little, since it had not appeared for so long.

By Andrii Kuk-Knyholiub

07.04.2019

To be honest, I hesitated to buy this book or not for a long time. I repeatedly picked it up in a bookstore, flipped through, read fragments, but finally decided to buy it. Why did I hesitate? Because it seemed to me too non-standard, when compared to the previous books of the fantastic genre I read (King, Sapkowski, Watts).

An Intellectual Quest

By Bohdan Pastukh

03.10.2018

A gloomy Saturday morning, one that no one had expected to see since yesterday’s warm evening. I hurry down the street to the Panorama Hotel, where the one who brought a sudden cold to Lviv is waiting for me — Jacek Dukaj, the author of the novel “Ice” (2007). …I walk into the hall, a tall smiling man stands up from the couch meeting me, and there is dry confidence in his handshake.

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What to Read on Long Winter Evenings

Volodymyr Arieniev’s Recommendations

10.12.2018

Many associate this two-volume novel with horror and panic before they actually begin to read it. First, its volume scares, and secondly, reviews from critics who claim that the depth of the text is unacceptable to the average reader. What do we say? Dukaj’s prose is thick and juicy, he pictures the world skilfully, Andrii Pavlyshyn’s translation is chic, and the “Ice” itself is quite digestible. And when to take it up if not in winter?

Favorite Books: Svitlana Taratorina

By Oksana Peljushenko

03.11.2018

Jacek Dukaj’s “Ice”. I have been waiting for this book in Ukrainian for several years. Jacek Dukaj is very popular in Poland. His style is unique and difficult to classify. He writes the “soft”, or as they say humane, fantastic fiction, and often resorts to linguistic experiments. Here we should express our gratitude to the translator of “Ice” Andrii Pavlyshyn.

5 New Books to Read in December

By Ihor Bondar-Tereshchenko

13.12.2018

According to the plot of this grandiose epic novel, created in the genre of alternative history, the Tunguska catastrophe in 1908 was turned into the fact that the terrains of Eurasia were occupied by the Chills that freeze everything: from metals to history.

Tesla in Siberia and Jack the Ripper in Khreshchatyk: 5 Books of Action-Packed Fiction

By Lada Luzina

23.12.2018

Today’s thrillers with action books and detectives are no longer a purely “terrifying” reading, but also a true collection of lifehacks, most of which will not be superfluous for the general public. So the dynamic plot is complemented by topical analytics — historical, criminal, everyday — which makes this reading popular and required.

The Ice Philosopher. Interview with Jacek Dukaj

By Sviatoslav Czyruk. «Das ist fantastisch!» Ukrainian-Language Fantasy Almanac # 5, Cimmeria, 2018/2019

Jacek Dukaj is one of the most famous Polish science fiction writers of today. In essence, he is a living classic with incredible ideas, a writer whose creativity makes one think that fantastic fiction can be high, intellectual literature, not just entertainment. He won the Zajdel Prize on six separate occasions, the most prestigious Polish science fiction prize, getting which at least once is a huge victory. For the depth of his works, he is called the second Lem.

The UNESCO City of Literature Award Has Announced the Finalists

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The Best Ukrainian Books of 2019 According to PEN

By Natalia Bushkovska

26.12.2019

Last year, the PEN Ukraine Non-Governmental Organization, created to protect freedom of speech and authors’ rights, introduced the tradition — in the last days of December PEN shares with you a list of the best Ukrainian books of the year. In the Foreign Literature nomination there are two editions of the Astrolabe Publishing: a two-volume novel by Jacek Dukaj and the two-volume “Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer.