The Inside Story: How Sofia Andrukhovych’s ‘Amadoka’ captured global literary spotlight

Sofia Andrukhovych’s novel “Amadoka” appears poised to become one of the most translated Ukrainian novels in recent years. The book’s success is due in part to literary agent Elianna Kan and Ivan Fedechko at Old Lion Publishing House, who have facilitated rights sales across Europe and for English-language editions.

Chytomo spoke with Kan at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, where she detailed how she used the London Book Fair in April to generate interest and secure rights sales for the critically acclaimed 800-page historical novel.

Kan, or Regal Hoffmann & Associates, noted that book fairs continue to serve as an effective platform for generating buzz in a project among the global network of book professionals, something that’s more challenging to achieve remotely.

“And it was nice, by the third day of the London Book Fair, people were asking us, are you the one with this big Ukrainian novel? This is crazy. What’s going on? And so, some of it is just hype, but it’s particularly meaningful when the thing that you’re hyping is substantive and urgent and so clearly singular that everything’s sort of lined up in a kind of fortuitous way,” Kan recalled.

Full interview:

Published in Ukraine by Old Lion Publishing House in 2020, Amadoka spans much of the 20th and 21st centuries of Ukrainian history. This year, it won the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Prize, an award intended to honor the work that promotes Ukrainian Jewish understanding.

This article is a part of the “Chytomo Picks: New Books from Ukraine” project. The materials have been prepared with the assistance of the Ukrainian Book Institute at the expense of the state budget. The author’s opinion may not coincide with the official position of the Ukrainian Book Institute.