“This is a war of annihilation and we have no right to lose it”: A meeting with Peace Prize winner Serhiy Zhadan, whose diaries from Kharkiv are already among the best that can be read from Ukraine today.
Of
Felix Stephen
Serhij Zhadan was born in 1974 and grew up in Donbass. His poems and novels are published by Suhrkamp in German translation. On Sunday, October 23, 2022, he will receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
(Photo: Regina Schmeken)
There is always a certain tension when you sit across from Serhij Zhadan as a Western journalist. This man gives ska-punk concerts with his band full-time Zhadan and the dogs. In his second job as the most important Ukrainian writer of his generation, he writes novels in which Western journalists take on supporting roles as idiotic onlookers who follow Ukrainian women and ask unsuspecting questions.