Oksana Zabuzhko & Marina Snoek
In the fifth episode of Current Literary Affairs we talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one year ago. Gülden Ilmaz speaks with the Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko and her translator in the Dutch language Marina Snoek. How have they experienced the past year of war? Which misconceptions still exist about the war and Russian imperialism? What is the role of literature and culture and why is the Ukrainian language of vital importance?
Current Literary Affairs is a podcast by SLAA and Read My World. This podcast was realized thanks to Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Productiehuis Noord, the media channel of ‘Verdedig Noord’.
“The war in Ukraine started already thirty years ago,” according to the Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko. “The West hasn’t paid attention all these years.” Which misconceptions still exist about the war and Russian imperialism? What is the role of literature and culture and why is the Ukrainian language of vital importance? In the fifth episode of Current Literary Affairs Gülden Ilmaz discusses these questions with Oksana Zabuzhko and her translator into the Dutch language Marina Snoek.
About
Current Literary Affairs is a podcast about current events through the lens of literature, in which we engage in conversation with writers from all over the world. How do the political circumstances in their country of residence influence their life and work? What are the topics we really should be talking about? CLA brings urgent conversation about fear and hope, outrage and pride, the personal and the political.
Oksana Zabuzhko is a writer, essayist and one of the most prominent public intellectuals of Ukraine. She wrote the feminist classic Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (1996), the prize winning Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2010), a multigenerational story about Ukrainian history, and the collection of stories Sister, Sister (2003). In My Longest Book Tour (2022), she discusses, from her involuntary exile, the greatest misconceptions about the war and Russian politics.
Marina Snoek is a visual artist and translator from Russian and Ukrainian into Dutch. She translated several stories and novels by Oksana Zabuzhko into Dutch, like Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (2009) and Sister, Sister (2022).