Description:
In The Hamlet Called America, Khrystia Vengryniuk has brilliantly rendered a mostly isolated village--full of eccentric characters living, loving, and losing together--and in doing so has created an astounding metaphor for the pitfalls of contemporary national isolationism, which speaks directly to the fraught political culture plaguing not only the United States, but the whole world.
Review Quotes:
"There are books that have every right to become cult and iconic for literature. Khrystia Vengryniuk's book is one of them. The Hamlet Called America tells about the 'deep' Ukraine, a Ukraine that Bosch could have painted or Marquez could have described. The wonderful and vivid microcosm of the characters and events of this novel will remain in the reader's thoughts for a long time." --Andrey Kurkov, author of The Silver Bone and Death and the Penguin
"Khrystia Vengryniuk treats her characters with admirable compassion and warmth. Her story, paradoxically, induces a constant feeling of otherworldliness and timelessness, while also being very realistic in its details. She amazingly switches narration voices, from poetic to vernacular to philosophical to humorous and beyond. The Hamlet Called America is a novel that lingers in the reader's mind." --Artem Chapeye, author of The Weathering and Ordinary People Don't Carry Machine Guns
"A lost archetypal village--a universe unto itself, with its own mythology and eccentric characters who feel utterly alive and real. A distinctive kind of magical realism coming from Ukraine's inexhaustible oral tradition, both past and present. Khrystia Vengryniuk writes with remarkable flair and imagination, effortlessly bringing together the everyday and the absurd, weaving stories and voices that linger long after the last page." --Georgi Gospodinov, Author of Death and the Gardener