The Siege. Novellas. Short Stories

The “Non-Canonical Canon” series is a way to talk about all those we didn’t know, whose texts we read without understanding the context of their time. Here you’ll find a wide spectrum of Ukrainian authors and their works. Each text is accompanied by reading guides from Ukrainian literary scholars.

“I would not want to return to my childhood even for a moment” — Hryhir Tiutiunnyk often said about his life. Yet he returned to it again and again, assembling in his works a puzzle of (auto)biographical stories of young characters who faced harsh trials: war, Soviet totalitarianism, poverty, violence…

Tiutiunnyk’s novellas and short stories focus on revealing the inner world of a person — a child, a young man, a young woman — with all the experiences and tragic, fatalistic undertones. This world is fragile and vulnerable against the relentless brutality of wartime and postwar life, and the pain carried by these young characters stays with the reader for a long time.