From Skovoroda to the Present Day: 100 Notable Books in Ukrainian

Special project by PEN Ukraine and The Ukrainians online magazine

Perhaps, everyone of you contemplating on what to read next has seen such selections, as 100 Books of All Times, 100 Best Novels in English, 100 Notable Books by the New York Times …

In many countries around the globe lists of must read books exist. Similar selections are compiled by competent media outlets, libraries, state institutions or renowned authors. Based on these lists publishers then form collections of& Golden Funds of Literature, officials and philanthropists purchase the editions for libraries, and readers form their reading plans.

To date no Ukraine-based edition or institution had not come up with a similar list. This task has been undertaken by Ukrainian Centre of PEN International uniting leading Ukrainian writers, journalists, publishers, translators, scholars and human rights defenders. The compilation process lasted for over six month and included several stages of voting and discussion.

100 works which have entered the final list were selected among nearly 300 suggested by members of PEN Ukraine.

Goals

Show abundance and genre variety of Ukrainian literature;
Draw attention of Ukrainian and international readership to significant works which due to certain reasons were forgotten or little known;
Guide publishers, librarians and cultural managers to the works which have to be republished, reconsidered and be available in holdings among Ukraine’s libraries;
Motivate Ukrainian media to write and talk more about Ukrainian literature.

Selection criteria

The list contains works enriching Ukrainian and world literature, characterized by specific author’s style, suggesting new ideas and senses, as well as having influenced the development of Ukrainian language and formation of Ukraine;
The list comprises works in Ukrainian language written in XVIII-ХХІ centuries;
The list represents poetry, prose, playwriting, essayistics, and memoirs, but excludes academic editions;
A work is a novel, story, novella, short story, poem, as well as collections of stories, novels and poems, established by an author as one complete work;
Each other is represented in the list by only one work.

Is this list a canon of Ukrainian literature?

Creators of the list underline the fact that this is not a canon of Ukrainian literature, in particular because it does not represent a large and significant layer of old literature, as well as works in other languages constituting an important part of Ukrainian culture. Moreover, PEN Ukraine unites authors of different age, education backgrounds and different degree of engagement into the contemporary literary process. Therefore, this list is not canonical, although it does illustrate a milestone attempt in methodology establishment for creating such canon.

Eventually, this list has not been designed for philologists, literary scholars or critics. Its primary target audience is readership which has an opportunity to comprehend the multi-faceted essence of Ukrainian literature, to discover forgotten or ignored by school curricula books for yourself, but most importantly to feel joy from reading in your language, about yourself and your country.

From Skovoroda to the Present Day: 100 Notable Books in Ukrainian

Special project by PEN Ukraine and The Ukrainians online magazine

Goals

Selection criteria

Is this list a canon of Ukrainian literature?

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