BOOK NOTES

Volume of stories presents the Ukrainian experience

"Two Lands, New Visions," by Janice Kulyk Keefer and Solomea Pavlychko. Saskatchewan:Coteau Books, 1998, 320 pages, $15.95 Canadian/$13.95 U.S., paper.

The complete spectrum of the Ukrainian experience, from the perspective of writers in Ukraine and Ukrainian writers in Canada, is explored for the first time in a fictional way in the book "Two Lands, New Visions: Stories from Canada and Ukraine."

This anthology of 20 short stories was edited by Janice Kulyk Keefer and Solomea Pavlychko and holds a variety of compelling visions - some disturbing, some inspiring, others heartbreaking - all of them as fascinating for their diversity as for what they have in common. The stories are "interesting and captivating, terrible and funny," according to Ms. Pavlychko.

"Canadians of whatever background ... have the opportunity of discovering something of what it is like to live in contemporary Ukraine - the hopes and frustrations, the continuing shock of the old and the comparable shock of a runaway and often hostile 'new,'" Ms. Keefer wrote in the introduction.

Ms. Keefer is an award-winning Canadian writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and Ms. Pavlychko was a literary scholar and head of the editorial board of the Kyiv-based Osnovy publishing house. The translations of the Ukrainian stories into English were done by Marco Carynnyk and Marta Horban.

"Two Lands, New Visions" is available from Coteau Books, 401-2206 Dewdney Ave., Regina, SK S4R 1H3, or http://coteau.unibase.com/.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 25, 2001, No. 8, Vol. LXIX

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