Translation of Tamara Hundorova’s ‘Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma’ published in the U.S.

Ukrainian researcher and literary scholar Tamara Hundorova announced the release of the English translation of her book “Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma” by the American publishing house Academic Studies Press. The book was translated by Tanya Savchynska.

“Saint Nicholas has brought wonderful news! ‘Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma’ is now available in English, and you can order it,” Hundorova wrote.

She expressed gratitude to the publisher for its collaboration and for supporting interest in Ukrainian humanities research. Academic Studies Press had earlier released her book “The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s.”

According to the author, the English-language edition should become an important tool for understanding the Russian-Ukrainian war in a broader intellectual context and contribute to the expansion of Western discussions on Ukrainian decolonization.

In Ukraine, the book was published by Hrani-T Publishing House under the title “Transit Culture: Symptoms of Postcolonial Trauma” in 2021, and later republished by Vykhola Publishing House in 2024.

“This book explores transitional post-Soviet cultural consciousness in Ukraine at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The main themes in the book are postcolonial traumas in relation to past empires and old historiographical narratives; post-totalitarian consciousness, which is characterized by sociocultural ruptures, postcolonial resentment, and intergenerational crises; and post-memory as a means of overcoming historical and familial traumas. Against the backdrop of the Chornobyl catastrophe, the book examines the meeting of different generations and views the clown Verka Serduchka as a mediator between the transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet world. The book focuses on three significant Ukrainian novels written between the two Maidans: ‘The Museum of Abandoned Secrets’ by Oksana Zabuzhko (2009), ‘Voroshilovgrad’ by Serhiy Zhadan (2010), and ‘Notes of a Ukrainian Madman’ by Lina Kostenko (2010),” the annotation to the book reads.

Tamara Hundorova is a professor, literary scholar, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, associate researcher at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, senior researcher at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, and visiting researcher at Princeton University.

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Main image: Vikhola publisher website

Copy editing: Joy Tataryn