'Forgottenness' wrestles with the meaning of Ukrainian identity — and time
In writer Tanja Maljartschuk's novel, the narrator's malaise and weakening attachment to time serve as a metaphor for today's Ukraine, as well as for other struggling democracies, including our own.
Ukraine has been in the headlines daily since the latest Russian invasion in 2022.
Now in Forgottenness -- a cryptic, haunting novel meant to be read in this moment — award-winning Ukrainian writer Tanja Maljartschuk wrestles with the meaning of Ukrainian identity. In the book, she also probes the elasticity of time — and the idea that it eventually erases all identities, national and personal.
The novel follows two threads: the biography of Polish-Ukrainian social and political activist Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882-1931)
