Publisher's Synopsis
Captivating, innovative Ukrainian fiction about displaced women living in the shadow of the war with Russia
’A daring, unsettling book about displaced women telling luminous stories to survive the darkness that surrounds them’ Jenny Offill, author of Weather
In Lucky Breaks, we encounter anonymous women from the margins of Ukrainian society, their lives upended by the ongoing conflict with Russia. A woman, bewildered by her broken umbrella, tries to abandon it like a sick relative; a beautiful florist suddenly disappears, her shop converted into a warehouse for propaganda; hiding out from the shelling, neighbours read horoscopes in the local paper that tell them when it's safe to go outside.
In stories of linguistic verve and dark, absurdist wit, Yevgenia Belorusets writes of how trauma seeps into the mundane, telling surreal, unsettling tales of survival in a shattered country.
'Through Belorusets's lens, small actions and encounters take on the qualities of myth... The effect is rather as if Isaac Babel and the Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich had offspring' Harper's
'Profound narrative absurdities readily evoke the Ukrainian-born Nikolai Gogol's... spellbinding' Maria Stepanova, New York Times
