Escape From War to…War: Military Visions in Contemporary Ukrainian Historical Mysteries

• In Event: Escape to the Past: Escapist Trend in Ukrainian Fiction of the Turn of the 20th-21st Centuries

Abstract

The focus of the paper is placed on the novels by Vasyl Dobryanski, Bohdan Kolomiychuk, Andriy Kokotyukha, Vladyslav Ivchenko, the events in which take place in the military landscapes of the First World War and the National Liberation Struggle in Ukraine in 1917-1921. The detecting heroes investigate crimes motivated by war situations, involving the military and imperial authorities. This modifies the escapist nature of the detective genre: the reader, fleeing from the events of the actual Russian-Ukrainian war, again finds himself/herself in a situation of military confrontation, looking for parallels with the present time, the origins of the current problems of postcolonial Ukraine, which had lost its chance for Independence a hundred years ago, but is now fiercely fighting for it.

Author

• Sofiya Filonenko, Ukrainian Catholic U (Ukraine)