Voroshilovgrad

His most recent novel, “Voroshilovgrad,” won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland; he has drawn enthusiastic audiences in Austria, Germany, Poland, and Russia.

Similarly, it is possible to read “Voroshilovgrad” as a bildungsroman, though the protagonist and narrator, Herman, is past bildungsroman age.

In “Voroshilovgrad,” the law’s very absence becomes, itself, a menacing presence.

In “Voroshilovgrad,” Zhadan describes a kind of war zone at the Ukrainian-Russian border near Rostov: men wearing camouflage and balaclavas and carrying Kalashnikovs, occasionally taking a hostage or two.

“Voroshilovgrad” is an unsentimental novel about human relationships in conditions of brutality in which there is not a single act of betrayal.