Academic Studies Press presents cover for Lyubko Deresh’s “Medusa’s Gaze”

Academic Studies Press has revealed the English-language cover of “Medusa’s Gaze” by Ukrainian writer Lyubko Deresh.

The novel was translated from Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan and Kate Tsurkan. In Ukrainian, the book was published in 2024 by Anetta Antonenko Publishing House under the title “The Gaze of Medusa. A Small Book of Darkness”.

“The Gaze of Medusa” is a wartime novel that uses the ancient myth of Medusa to speak about Russia’s full-scale invasion and the psychological experience of war. The book follows four school friends whose lives are changed by the invasion. One of them, Slava, becomes a soldier, is wounded and loses someone close to him.

Deresh presents the experience of war through the eyes of civilians: freezing, petrification and the direct gaze at war itself. The novel gradually intertwines the experience of war with the Greek myth of Medusa, avoiding some familiar tropes of war literature. It does not focus on a hero at the front, a triumphant return from war, or the first morning of the full-scale invasion. Deresh turns to the inner aftermath of war, memory and the difficulty of returning to ordinary life after extreme experience.

Lyubko Deresh is one of the most recognisable Ukrainian prose writers of the 2000s. His debut novel “Cult” became one of the defining literary phenomena of that generation. Along with other author’s books, it was translated into Bulgarian, German,French, Italian, Polish, Romanian, and others. More information about Deresh’s works is available in the Chapter Ukraine catalogue.

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Main image, image: Academic Studies Press