Kyiv as a Palimpsest of Cultural Memories in Ukrainian YA Urban Fantasy Since 2022

• In Event: Urban Spaces as the Space of Memory, Oblivion, and Community Belonging in Contemporary Ukrainian and Lithuanian Literature

Abstract

Following the panel’s focus on the intersection of memory and space, this presentation looks at several recent titles of Ukrainian young adult (YA) urban fantasy thematically associated with the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and set in Kyiv. The corpus includes Olena Zakharchenko’s “Metro do temnoho mista” (Subway to the Dark City, 2022), Alina Reingard’s “Levove zavdannia” (Lion’s task, 2022), Miia Marchenko’s and Kateryna Pekur’s “Dity vohnennoho chasu” (Children of the fiery times, 2024) and Kateryna Korniienko’s “Dyvokrovtsi” (Wonderbloods, 2024), with the primary focus on Marchenko and Pekur’s novel set in real and otherworldly Kyiv in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion. While literary urban studies have read texts about cities of various genres as such that treat the urban space as a “palimpsest” (Corboz) or “superposition” (Benjamin) of layers of cultural memory, the speculative nature of urban fantasy allows taking what is usually an analytic metaphor to the level of physical embodiment in the fantastical story world. These novels feature settings of superimposed spaces and coexisting characters associated with different periods of the city’s history, thereby inviting the reader to explore the notions of place identity and place attachment in the new light. The contemporary events that are the backdrop to the fantastic plots are thus reinterpreted through inscription into the historical time of the city’s existence. Consequently, I argue, these novels also contribute to the establishment of a collective memory narrative about these recent events. Drawing on the understanding of urban fantasy as essentially a genre of commentary on modernity (Ekman), this paper explores how the genre tradition combines with the dominant understanding of the decolonial nature of Ukrainian resistance in the ongoing war in these novels, as well as with the texts' targeting of a younger audience whose generation is expected to correct the mistakes of the (semi-colonial) past.

Author

• Daria Semenova, Vilnius U (Lithuania)