Yaryna Grusha wins Italian literary honor for novel about post-Chornobyl and modern Ukraine

Ukrainian writer, translator, and scholar Yaryna Grusha has received a special international honor at Italy’s 2026 Viareggio-Répaci literary prize for her novel “The Blue Album” (“L’Album Blu”).

The special honor recognized Grusha for her contribution to promoting Ukrainian culture in Italy and Europe, as well as for literary work that brings together memory, identity, and civic responsibility.

“The Blue Album” was written in Italian and published in 2026 by Bompiani, one of Italy’s major publishing houses. The novel has not yet been published in Ukrainian. A Ukrainian edition is expected from the Old Lion Publishing House in 2027.

The novel opens in the aftermath of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and follows Yaryna, the main character, through the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian independence, the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In a post about her debut novel, Grusha described it as a coming-of-age novel about a new Ukrainian generation that inherited complicated pages of family and national history. She wrote that each generation in the family at the center of the novel was shaped by decisions made in Moscow. An executed great-grandfather, a grandmother marked as the daughter of an “enemy of the people,” parents fleeing the region after the explosion of the fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and children born in the 1980s who grew up in the 1990s, joined the Maidan protests in 2004 and 2013, witnessed Russia’s occupation of Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and later lived through the full-scale invasion.

Grusha teaches Ukrainian language and literature at the University of Milan and is a member of the Italian Association of Ukrainian Studies. She is also active as a translator of Ukrainian literature into Italian.

As reported earlier, Yaryna Grusha and Alessandro Achilli were shortlisted for the 2025 Drahomán Prize for their Italian translation of Iryna Shuvalova’s poetry collection “Endsongs.” The Drahomán Prize recognizes translators who bring Ukrainian literature to readers abroad.

Grusha also took part in the opening of the Victoria Amelina reading room at Gallaratese Library in Milan in 2024. At the ceremony, she read from the Italian translation of Amelina’s “Dom’s Dream Kingdom” and from one of Amelina’s last poems in both Italian and Ukrainian.

The Viareggio-Répaci Prize is one of Italy’s oldest and most prestigious literary awards. Founded in 1929, it annually recognizes Italian books and authors and also includes special honors for international figures. In 2026, only the special honorees have been announced so far; winners in the main categories are expected to be named July 26.

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Main image: The Ukrainians Media