Description
Book SynopsisThe poems in
The Voices of Babyn Yar convey the experiences of ordinary civilians going through unbearable events leading to the massacre at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar. Conceived as a tribute to the fallen, the book raises difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and commemoration of those who had witnessed an evil that verges on the unspeakable.
Trade ReviewThere is no doubt that
The Voices of Babyn Yar is destined to become a classic text in the Ukrainian canon. Will this poetry save nations or people? Of course not. But it will forever serve as a reminder of the human capacity for evil—a prompt we seem to require on a regular basis. -- Askold Melnyczuk * Times Literary Supplement *
Kiyanovska has collected the imaginary testimony of individuals entwined in these unspeakable atrocities. Now they speak…Paradoxically, because the poems are presented as poetic communications, permeated with interjections from the poet herself, they do not further rend the fabric of reality, but have an utter authenticity that can only be explained by vision. -- Matthew Zapruder * Orion *
In a translation that nudges close to the linguistic breaking points of the original, while retaining the fullness of its poetic registers and plethora of references to Ukrainian, Jewish, Soviet, and Western contexts, the seasoned translators-cum-poets Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky draw attention to an extraordinary work within the literary canon of the Holocaust. -- MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work
In 2017, the poet Marianna Kiyanovska published her collection
Babyn Yar: Holosamy. It has now been translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rozochinsky in a virtuosic English version…[The] poems include a discussion of the Nazi genocide, Soviet revisionist history, and recent conversations about identity and citizenship. -- Amelia Glaser * Jewish Renaissance *
