Ukrainian writer, translator, public figure, frontman of the bands "Zhadan and Dogs" and "Mannerheim Line". The author of the novels "Despatch Mode", "Voroshilovgrad", "Mesopotamia", "Internat", poetry collections "Citation", "Ethiopia", "Life of Mary", "Templars", "Antenna", "List of ships" and others.
Serhii Zhadan's literary works have received numerous national and international awards, have been translated into more than twenty languages, making the author one of the most famous modern Ukrainian writers. Serhiy Zhadan is also an active organizer of the literary life of Ukraine and a participant in multimedia art projects. In 2017, he founded the Serhii Zhadan Charitable Foundation. Presenter on Trizub FM radio, Radio NV.
Biography
Serhii Zhadan at Book Arsenal 2021
He was born on August 23, 1974 in a Ukrainian-speaking family. He spent his childhood in Starobilsk, Voroshilovgrad region (modern Luhansk). During the Perestroika of 1990–1991, he distributed movement newspapers and national symbols in the town.
Later, in order to study at the university, he moved to Kharkiv. In 1996, he graduated from Kharkiv National Pedagogical University named after H. S. Skovoroda, Faculty of Ukrainian-German Philology.
From 1996 to 1999, he studied at the graduate school of the same university. Defended a dissertation devoted to Ukrainian futurism: "Philosophical and aesthetic views of Mykhailo Semenko" (2000).
Since 2000, he has been a teacher at the department of Ukrainian and world literature at the university.
He has been a writer since 2004.
In March 2008, Zhadan's novel "Anarchy in the UKR" in the Russian translation was included in the "long list" of the Russian literary award "National Bestseller" (the nominee was the Russian writer Dmytro Gorchev). In 2008, the same book entered the shortlist and received an honorary certificate of the "Book of the Year" competition at the Moscow International Book Fair.
In May 2010, GQ magazine nominated Zhadan for the second time for the title of "Man of the Year" in the "Writers" category for the book "Red Elvis" (the first nomination took place in 2008 for "Anarchy in the UKR"). Critics call Serhiy Zhadan one of the best writers from the countries of the former USSR, note his ability to be his own for both a simple and an educated audience. His novel "Voroshilovgrad", which was called the manifesto of an entire generation, received special praise and support.
From 2016 to 2019, he was a member of the Taras Shevchenko National Award Committee of Ukraine.
On February 11, 2017, Serhiy Zhadan was detained in Minsk and received an entry ban, but the next day the entry ban was lifted.
Lives and works in Kharkiv. He regularly performs his works in various cities of Ukraine and Western Europe, including accompanied by Ukrainian musicians (in particular, the ska-punk band Zhadan and Dogs).
Serhiy Zhadan in Poland. 2022 year
In May 2017, he was awarded the Vasyl Stus Prize "For a special contribution to Ukrainian culture and sustainability of citizenship".
In September 2017, the new book "Internat" was published.
On December 18, 2019, PEN America announced the longlists for the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards. Serhiy Zhadan's book of selected poems "What We Live For, What We Die For" (English: What We Live For, What We Die For) translated by theater director Virlyana Tkach and American poet Wanda Phipps is among the nominees in the "Translated Poetry" category ".
In June 2022, Zhadan was awarded the German Booksellers' Peace Prize (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels). The website of the award announced that the award was given "for outstanding creativity and for the humanitarian attitude with which he cares for people during the war and helps them, risking his life." Serhii Zhadan received the award on October 23, 2022.
On April 24, 2023, Serhii Zhadan filed a civil lawsuit for divorce from Iryna Kunitsyna, with whom he had lived for almost 15 years. At the same time, there were rumors that Zhadan was dating the singer Khrystyna Solova.
Social activities
In 1992, he was one of the organizers of the Kharkiv neo-futurist literary group "Red Fira".
During the Orange Revolution, Zhadan was the commandant of a tent city in Kharkiv.
He is known for his critical statements and publications against Kharkiv authorities Mykhailo Dobkin and Gennady Kernes.
"It is necessary to understand that when they (politicians) talk about the property of the Ukrainian people, in reality they are talking about lobbying only for the interests of the Russian language and about completely blocking the development and promotion of the Ukrainian language. (08.10.2010). »
He repeatedly expressed sympathy for anarchists, many of his works contain "leftist" motifs.
In 2011, he held an action against the law "On Protection of Public Morals".
Took an active part in the Kharkiv Euromaidan. He was injured while defending the building of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration from an assault by pro-Russian activists. During the assault, shots were heard, Euromaidan activists who defended the regional administration were executed; as a result, according to the Kharkiv City Council, 97 axles were damagedb: 76 of them were taken to emergency and emergency hospitals, to the regional hospital. Serhiy Zhadan was among the victims, who received a concussion and head dissection, a possible broken nose. The writer reported the details of his beating on his Facebook page.
He advocated the release of illegally convicted Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov from Russian imprisonment.
Member of the Ukrainian PEN.
Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, he provided volunteer assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He founded a charitable foundation that supports educational and cultural initiatives. In particular, he launched the project "The East Reads" to fill the libraries of Donetsk and Luhansk regions with books.
With the song "Spy my child", the lyrics of which he wrote for Ruslan Horovoy, he joined the campaign "This is how memory works", dedicated to the memory of Danylo Didik and all those who gave their lives for the independence of Ukraine.
Writing and translation work
Writes novels, poetry, essays. The subject of the writer's works is the post-Soviet reality in Ukraine. Zhadan's style is characterized by the use of colloquial and obscene vocabulary.
The novel "Voroshilovgrad" became the book of 2010 according to the "BBC" version. The presentation of the novel in Starobilsk, the writer's homeland, took place on April 7, 2011, during the Donbas tour organized by the Human Rights Center "Postup" and the STAN Literary Group as part of the Public Campaign against the establishment of censorship in Ukraine. Due to pressure from the local authorities, some performances planned as part of the Donbas tour were cancelled.
He translates poetry from German (including Paul Celan), English (including Charles Bukowski), Belarusian (including Andrii Khadanovich), Russian (including Kirill Medvedev, Danyla Davydov).
Zhadan's texts have been translated into German, English, Polish, French, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Belarusian, Russian, Armenian and some other languages.
In 2014, within the framework of the CYCLOP video poetry festival, he participated in the "divisions" project.
Nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature
In March 2022, the Literary Sciences Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences nominated Serhiy Zhadan for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In particular, in the retraction in connection with the possible consequences of Russian aggression against Ukraine, it was about the following:
"We have adopted a decision to nominate Serhiy Zhadan for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Zhadan is one of the most outstanding poets of Ukraine and a brilliant prose writer, his works have been translated into many languages and awarded in the world, we are convinced that he is a writer at the level of the Nobel Prize. His voice as a poet has been of special importance to Ukrainians for many years. Free Ukraine largely speaks and thinks in Zhadan's words, listens carefully to them. Today the poet is in his Kharkiv. He is fighting. »
Vocabulary of works
The vocabulary used by Serhiy Zhadan in his works of art is diverse in terms of subject matter and scope of use, stylistic color and emotional load, expressiveness, and precisely such syncretism and variegation allow the writer to convey his thoughts and feelings as clearly as possible. Any word used by the author is not accidental. Each lexeme, combining with another, encodes thoughts, characterizes the essence of the problem, and the heterogeneity and richness of the lexical composition testifies to the talent of the writer, his education, intellectual level and national consciousness, and also reflects the richness of the writer's linguistic picture. Expressive vocabulary is one of the most active means of artistic expression. Expressiveness is one of the key features of the writer's poetic works.
Writings
Poetic collections
General Yuda (Kyiv: Ukrainian writer, 1995),
Citatnik: Poems for mistresses and lovers (Kyiv: Smoloskip, 1995),
Pepsi (Kharkiv: Maidan, 1998),
Ballads about war and reconstruction: A new book of poems (Lviv: Kalvariya, 2001),
History of culture at the beginning of the century (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2003),
Maradona: A New Book of Poems (Kharkiv: Folio, 2007) — contains as the second part translations from Marcin Svetlitsky, Charles Bukovsky, Paul Tselyan,
Ethiopia (Kharkiv: Folio, 2009) — contains a section "Comments" with five stories,
Fire and Knife (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2012),
Maria's Life: A Book of Poems and Translations (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz; Books — XXI, 2015) — the collection also includes translations from Rainer Maria Rilke and Czeslaw Milosz.
Templars: New Poems, 2015—2016 (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz; Books — XXI, 2016).
Antenna (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2018).
List of ships: New poems, 2018-2019 (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2020).
Aviation Psalm (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2021).
Prose
Novels
Depeche Mode (Kharkiv: Folio, 2004),
Anarchy in the UKR (Kharkiv: Folio, 2005),
Voroshilovgrad (Kharkiv: Folio, 2010),
Mesopotamia (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2014) is a novel in short stories and thirty poems.
Boarding school (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2017)
Stories, essays, novels
Big Mac (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2003) — six stories,
Anthem wheredemocratic youth (Kharkiv: Folio, 2006) — six stories,
The Three-Cylinder Engine of Love (with Yuriy Andruhovych and Lyubko Deresh; Kharkiv: Folio, 2007) — Zhadan owns the section "NATO Bloc", consisting of eight stories-essays,
Big Mac and other stories (Kharkiv: Folio, 2011) — fifteen stories,
Ward No. 7 (with Lada Luzina; Kharkiv: Folio, 2013) — Zhadan owns the novel "And Mama hid it in her hair" (2012),
Big Mac. Reboot (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2015) — twenty stories,
When the heat subsides (Ivano-Frankivsk: Lileya-NV, 2015; "werewolf" book, under the same cover with Mirek Bodnar's collection "Brikolage") - columns from 2010 to 2013, published on the "TSN.ua" website.
DNA (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2016) is the author of the idea and one of the stories in the book.
Drama
Bread Armistice (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2020).
Embroidered The King of Ukraine (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2020; in fact, the book was published in 2021)
Selected works
The very best poems, psychedelic stories of fighting and otherbullshit Selected poems 1992—2000 (Donetsk: Kalmiyus, 2000),
Citatnyk (Kharkiv: Folio, 2005) - collections "Citatnyk", "Pepsi", "Ballads of War and Reconstruction", poems outside the collections, nativity scene "Mary Christmas, Jesus Christ!", new collection "U. R.S.R.",
Capital (collection) (Kharkiv: Folio, 2006) — the novels "Despatch Mod", "Anarchy in the UKR", the collections "Hymn of Democratic Youth" and "Citation" (2005),
Big Mac² (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2007) is a reprint of the collections "Big Mac" and "History of Culture at the Beginning of the Century" with the addition of two new stories,
Lily Marlen: Book of New and Selected Poems (Kharkiv: Folio, 2009) — poems from the collections of 1995-2009, the new cycle "Lesbiyka" and four short stories,
Farewell to a Slavic Woman (Kharkiv: Folio, 2011) — poetry collections of 1995—2009 (without translations and stories),
Gospels and spirituals (spiritual chants of the Rastamans of the northern Black Sea region) (Kharkiv: Folio, 2012) is a miniature book, selected poems from the books of 1995-2010,
Dynamo Kharkiv (Kyiv: А-BA-BA-GA-LA-MA-GA, 2014) — selected poems of 1992-2014; in the third edition (2015) — poems from 1992-2015,
30 proofs of the existence of God (and 29 objections) (Kyiv: Laurus, 2014) — selected poems of 1993-2013,
God sympathizes with outsiders: 10 books of poems (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2015) - poetry collections from 1995 to 2014 (without translations, stories and nativity scene),
Swim, fish, swim (Chernivtsi: Chorni ivtsi; Books — XXI, 2016) — art book, separate edition of the poem; illustrations by Khrystyna Lukashchuk.
Permanent residence (Kharkiv: IST Publishing, 2020) — selected poems 1993-2020, art book, illustrations by Pavlo Makov.
Translations
Children of Rainer and Maria: An Anthology of Contemporary Viennese Poetry (Kharkiv: Maidan, 2004),
Paul Tselyan. Light printing (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz; Books — XXI, 2014).
Dmytro Kuzmin "Blankets are not provided" (joint translation from Russian: Sergey Zhadan, Bohdan-Oleg Horobchuk, Dmytro Lazutkin, Oles Barlig, Lesyk Panasiuk, Mykhailo Zharzhailo, Anton Polunin, Igor Sid, Fridrich Chernyshov, Marta Mokhnatska and Ivan Hnativ, Yuriy Zavadskyi ) (Ternopil: KROC, 2018).
Pedro Lenz. My friend is a crane operator: Poems (translated from the German by Serhii Zhadan and Yevgenia Lopata) (Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz, 2018).
Bertolt Brecht. Praise of dialectics: Poetry (Chernivtsi: Publisher Pomerantsev Svyatoslav commissioned by the International Literary Corporation Meridian Czernowitz, 2021).
Vladimir Kaminer. Lost summer. Deutschland smokes on the balcony (translated from the German by Sergey Zhadan and Oksana Shchur) (Kyiv: Komora, 2021).
Adam Mensbach. Bye, bye, bye (Kharkiv: Vivat, 2022).
Compiler
Two cities. Anthology of Kharkiv poetry / Zwei Städte. Anthology of Nuremberg poetry (Kharkiv: Maidan, 2000) — together with Jürgen Bauer,
Kharkiv hotels. Anthology of New Kharkiv Literature (Kharkiv: Folio, 2008),
Decameron. 10 Ukrainian novelists of the last ten years (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2010),
Metamorphoses. 10 Ukrainian poets of the last 10 years (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2011),
Football writers. Literary collection of Ukraine (Kharkiv: Book Club "Family Leisure Club", 2011),
Total football (Kyiv: Grani-T, 2012).
Multimedia projects
Audiobook "Despatch Mod" (Dnipropetrovsk: "Art-Vertep" — "Lift" publishing house, 2007)
CD collection "Choir of Mongolian Militiamen" ("Gospel and Spirituals"), (Dnipropetrovsk: "Art-Vertep" — "Lift" publishing house, 2007)
Radio-Chanson or Radio chanson: eight stories about Yura Zoifer, (brochure + CD, Dnipropetrovsk: Art-Vertep: LIFT, 2007), Theater-Studio "Arabesque", Kharkiv Klezmer Band and Misko Barbara. book-disc, soundtrack to the play of the same name by the Kharkiv Theater "Arabesques" based on Serhiy Zhadan's poem.
Army Sports Club, Serhii Zhadan and Dogs in Space (Dnipropetrovsk: LIFT Publishing House, 2008).
Weapons of the Proletariat, Serhiy Zhadan and Dogs in Space (2012).
Fight for her, band Zhadan and Dogs. — Chernivtsi: Meridian Czernowitz; Books — XXI, 2014. — 108with.; CD.
Dogs, band Zhadan and Dogs (2016).
where is your line (EP), Mannerheim Line Band (2018).
Fights Without Rules (EP), Mannerheim Line Band (2018)[34].
Madonna, band Zhadan and Dogs (2019).
Confiscation, Mannerheim Line band (2020).
Winter/Snow (single), Mannerheim Line band (2021).
Translations of Serhiy Zhadan's works
Own texts were translated into German, English, Swedish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Russian, Armenian. In particular, the following translations of Zhadan's books were published:
"History of culture at the beginning of the century" — Russia, 2003; Poland, 2005; Germany, 2005; Czech Republic, 2013.
"Big Mac" - Poland, 2005; Russia, 2009; Czech Republic, 2011; Germany, 2011.
"Despatch Mode" — Russia, 2005; Poland, 2006; Belarus, 2006; Germany, 2007; Lithuania, 2008; Italy, 2009; Hungary 2010; USA, 2013; Sweden, 2014; Bulgaria, 2019; Czech Republic, 2019; Estonia, 2020.
"Anarchy in the UKR" — Poland, 2007; Germany, 2007; Bulgaria, 2007 (partial translation)[35]; Russia, 2008; Lithuania, 2010; Belarus, 2012; France, 2016; Norway, 2017.
"Hymn of Democratic Youth" — Poland, 2008; Germany, 2009; Russia, 2009; Slovakia, 2018; Bulgaria, 2019; France, Espace Instant, 2020.
"Suicide rate among clowns" - Germany, 2009; Poland, 2009.
"Voroshilovgrad" — Ukraine, 2011, 2012 (in Russian); Germany, 2012; Russia, 2012; Hungary, 2012; Poland, 2013; France, 2013; Belarus, 2016; Italy, 2016; Latvia, 2016; USA, 2016; The Netherlands, 2018; Slovenia, 2018; Georgia, 2018.
"Mesopotamia" — Poland, 2014; Germany, 2015; USA, 2018; Italy, 2018; Denmark, 2018; Latvia, 2019; Ukraine, 2019 (in Russian).
"From the Life of Mary" - Czech Republic, 2015.
"Ukrainian Airlines: Selected Poems" — Ukraine, 2015 (in Belarusian).
"Run without stopping" - Austria, 2016.
"Firearms and knives" - Russia, 2016.
"Everything depends only on us: Selected poems" - Latvia, 2016 (in Russian).
"Why am I not on social networks - Poems from the war" - Germany, 2016.
"Internat" — Russia, 2017 (electronic edition); Germany, 2018; Belarus, 2019; Romania, 2019; Poland, 2019; Macedonia, 2019; Denmark, 2020; USA, 2021; Lithuania, 2021.
"Drohobych" (poems) — Poland, 2018.
"Poems" — Belarus, 2018.
"What we live for is what we die for" (poems) - USA, 2019.
"Tobacco factories" (poems) — Ukraine, 2020 (in Russian).
"New spelling" (poems) - USA, 2020.
"Antena" — Poland, 2020.
"No one will return from long night wanderings" (poems) - Poland, 2021.
"Sky over Kharkiv" (posts from Facebook, not published in Ukrainian) — Germany, 2022.
"like a fish on a black shore" (poems) - Lithuania, 2023.
Filmography
2014 — Guide (role of Mykhailo Semenko, episode).
2016 - Love will fall on everyone (the role of a police major, episode).
2018 — Wild field (the role of a farmer, episode).
dubbing
2016 - Angry Birds in the cinema - Bomb
2019 - Angry Birds in the cinema 2 - Bomb
Clips
2017 - Rocky (song of the group "Brutto" to the words of Zhadan; mute role of an angel).
2017 — Bukhlo ("Zhadan and Dogs").
2018 - Where is your line? ("Mannerheim Line").
2018 - Kobzon ("Zhadan and Dogs").
2018 - Jesus of Nazareth ("The Mannerheim Line").
2019 — Drummer's heifer ("Zhadan and Dogs").
2019 - Malvy ("Zhadan and Dogs").
2022 — Youth (Khrystyna Solovay)
Awards and scholarships
1999 - Boo-Ba-Boo Award for the best poem of the year.
2001 — received the Hermann-Kesten-Stipendium (Nuremberg).
2001 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Voice of the Soul" category (Ballads of War and Reconstruction).
2002 — received the Herder-Stipendium (Töpfer Stiftung, Vienna).
2003 - received a scholarship from KulturKontakt (Vienna).
2005 — received a Gaude Polonia scholarship (Warsaw).
2006 — Hubert Burda Preis für junge Lyrik.
2006 - "BBC Book of the Year" award ("Capital").
2006 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Red Writing" category ("Capital").
2007 — laureate of the "Kyiv Lavra" poetry festival.
2008 — "Book of the Year" certificate at the Moscow Book Fair.
2009 — Joseph Konrad-Kozhenovsky Literary Award.
2010 - "BBC Book of the Year" award (Voroshilovgrad).
2012 — award "Golden Writer of Ukraine".
2012 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Red Writing" category ("Firearms and knives").
2014 - Brücke Berlin Award.
2014 — statuette of the Polish Economic Forum in the nomination "New culture of the new Europe".
2014 — Jan Michalski Prize for Literature ("Voroshilovgrad").
2014 - the "BBC Book of the Year" award in the "Best Book of the Decade" category (Voroshilovgrad).
2014 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Red Writing" category (Dynamo Kharkiv).
2015 - "Angelus" award for the novel "Mesopotamia".
2016 — award of the President of Ukraine "Ukrainian book of the year" for the novel "Mesopotamia".
2017 — "LitAccent of the Year" award for the "Templars" collection.
2017 — Vasyl Stus Prize.
2017 — the best book of the 24th Forum of Publishers in the nomination "Modern Ukrainian Prose" (novel "Internat").
2018 - "LitAccent of the Year" award for the novel "Boarding".
2018 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Red Writing" nomination("Antenna").
2019 — Wilhelm Tell Award 2019 for a significant contribution to strengthening relations between Ukraine and Switzerland.
2019 — honorary doctor of Kharkiv Pedagogical University named after Skovoroda.
Twice (2019, 2020) he was recognized as the sexiest figure of Ukrainian culture according to the results of a poll conducted by the People's Award "Golden Lifon".
2020 — award from "Ukrainian Pravda" for an active civic position.
2021 - Derek Wolcott Prize for the poetry collection "A New Orthography".
2022 — honorary doctor of Kharkiv National University named after V.N. Karazin.
2022 - Freedom Prize from the Frank Schirrmacher Foundation (Switzerland).
2022 — winner of the All-Ukrainian "Book of the Year" rating in the "Red Writing" nomination ("Aviation Psalm"; "Embroidered. King of Ukraine").
2022 - Gazety Wyborczej's person of the year.
2022 — literary prize of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the novel "The Orphanage".
2022 — Peace Prize of German Booksellers.
2022 — Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.
2022 - Jerzy Gedroyc Prize.
2022 - medal "Lublin - for heroes".
2022 — medal "For the defense of the hero city of Kharkiv".
2022 — Sergio Vieira di Mello Prize.
2022 — Schwarzkopf Europe Prize for the support of democratic values.
2022 - award of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine - medal "For assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine".
