Award-winning Ukrainian novel by Sofia Andrukhovych to be performed as a concert in Dartmouth

The North American premiere of “Amadoka”, a concert of contemporary music, will take place at 4 p.m. on Friday, April 5, in Rollins Chapel. The concert is free and open to the public.

The three composers, Albert Saprykin, Boris Loginov, and Maxim Kolomiiets who will also be performing, along with local musicians—draw inspiration from “Amadoka”, a novel by Sofia Andrukhovych.

“Amadoka” by Sofia Andrukhovych, originally published in Ukrainian in 2020, weaves through the complicated tapestry of Ukrainian history with personal stories. The author deals with three traumatic eras: Stalinist repressions of Ukrainian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century in the USSR, the incarnation of the Holocaust during World War II in Ukraine, and the Russian invasion of the country’s east and southeast in 2014. The novel’s central metaphor, reflected in its name, is a grand lake that existed in antiquity in today’s Podillia region of Ukraine. Much like the lake, people and cultures are vulnerable to oblivion, which is both one of the book’s themes and something that Ukrainian culture strives to avoid.

“Amadoka” is expected to be available in English from Simon and Schuster next year.

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The 2023 winner of the Encounter Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize, the book takes its title from an ancient lake in today’s Podillia region of Ukraine, weaving together gripping personal stories from three blood-stained eras: the Stalinist repressions of Ukrainian intelligentsia in what was then the Soviet Union, the Holocaust, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

Veronika Yadukha, a graduate of the MA Program Comparative Literature, conceived and curated the event, which will include a discussion with her and the composers after the performance.

Yadukha is a founding member of Translatorium, a literature and translation festival in Ukraine with a focus on artistic translation and translation between different art forms. The concert inspired by Amadoka premiered at Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi Regional Philharmonic Hall in 2022.

Sofia — performed by Orest Smovzh (violin), and composed by Albert Saprykin. A fragment of the piece

For more information, please contact Veronika Yadukha

Veronika.Yadukha@dartmouth.edu

Details could also be found here.