Winner of the Sholem Aleichem prize announced

Writer Oleksii Nikitin was awarded the 2024 Sholem Aleichem Prize for his novel “Bat-Ami,” the State Committee on Television and Radio reports. 

“Bat-Ami” tells the story of a Ukrainian-Jewish family in Kyiv during World War II. The text is based on documents declassified after 2011 by the NKVD intelligence department.

The book description reads, “In the summer of 1941, Illia Holdinov, a boxer and multiple champion of Ukraine in the prewar years, became the commander of a partisan group in the Kyiv region. His wife, Feliksa Tereshchenko, evacuates with their young daughter and returns to the capital of Ukraine in the fall of 1943 to find out the fate of her husband. The family story becomes a part of the history of the Great War and a reflection of the relations between Ukrainians and Jews during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. Among the characters who influenced the fate of the novel’s protagonists are the mayor of Poltava, OUN member Fedir Borkovskyi, NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR Vasyl Serhiienko, head of the Kyiv Hestapo Hans Schumacher, and former partisan and MP Sydir Kovpak.”

The book was published by Phoenix Publishing House.

Honorary Mention awards went to:

• Andrii Pavlyshyn for translating the anthology of Horacy Safrin’s work Przy szabasowych świecach. Humor żydowski” (By Shabbat Candles. Jewish Humor) (Dukh i Litera Publishing House, 2023);

• Ilariia Shevchenko for her translation of Antonio Iturbe’s novel “The Librarian of Auschwitz” (Vivat Publishing House, 2023).

The Sholem Aleichem Prize is awarded on a competitive basis to writers, translators, screenwriters, and playwrights who are citizens of Ukraine for the best literary and artistic works that popularize the spiritual and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples and promote a positive image of Ukraine in the world. In 2024, 12 candidates were nominated for the prize.

In 2022, the prize was awarded to Oleksandra Uralova, and in 2023 it was awarded to Sofiia Andrukhovych.

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Translation: Kateryna Shykitka

Editing: Lea Ann Douglas, Terra Friedman King