Trainspotting set against a grim post-Soviet backdrop. - Newsweek

World Literature Today’s Recommended Summer Reads 2016

A city-dwelling executive heads home to take over his brother’s gas station after his mysterious disappearance, but all he finds at home are mysteries and ghosts. The bleak industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, the Soviet era name of the Ukranian city of Luhansk, mixing magical realism and exhilarating road novel in poetic, powerful, and expressive prose.

Serhiy Zhadan, one of the key figureheads in contemporary Ukrainian literature and the most famous poet in the country, has become the voice of Ukraine’s Euro-Maidan movement. He lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine.