Where Currents Meet – Frontiers of Memory in Post–Soviet Fiction of Kharkiv, Ukraine : Frontiers of Memory in Post-Soviet Fiction of Kharkiv, Ukraine

This path-breaking study challenges the simplistic east-west division commonly applied to post-Soviet Ukraine, instead presenting Ukrainian and Russian cultural components in eastern Ukraine as part of a complex continuum rather than opposing forces.

Where Currents Meet, Tanya Zaharchenko's path-breaking study of literature and cultural memory, moves decisively beyond the simplistic view of a post-Soviet Ukraine divided between east and west. It positions the Ukrainian and Russian components of cultural experience in the country's east as elements of a complex continuum. Combining insights from memory studies and border studies, Zaharchenko analyzes a generation of younger riters in the city of Kharkiv - a 'doubletake generation' that came of age at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse and now revisits this experience through fiction. In the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andree Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev, and others the author reveals how borderlands and frontiers, both geographical and conceptual, acquire zonal qualities of their own as these writers navigate the historical legacy they have inherited.