Juri Andruchowytsch

Ukrainian writer, poet and essayist Juri Andruchowytsch is one of Europe’s best-known contemporary authors, with works published in 20 languages. He is one of the most important cultural and intellectual voices in his country. His most internationally successful novel, Moscoviáda, tells the story of a literature student living in Moscow in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapses. Although it was published in 1993, the work remains as relevant as ever and is almost frighteningly visionary. At asphalt 2024, “Moscoviáda” will be performed in a stage adaptation by the Divadlo X10 theatre from Prague. Juri Andruchowytsch will give a festival speech before the production, an essayistic introduction to the evening’s spectacle. He will recall how he wrote his novel 32 years ago, and what motivated and inspired him at the time. And, of course, he will draw a connection to today’s aggressor Russia and the war against Ukraine – the ghosts of Moscoviáda have reawakened and become life-threatening…

Juri Andruchowytsch (*1960 in Iwano-Frankiwsk, Western Ukraine) began as a poet. As a young man, he revolutionised the Ukrainian literary language with his novel “Carpathian Carnival”. Later, he took a satirical look at developments in Ukraine and Russia – a style he has retained in today’s threatening times. His novels have been translated into English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, among other languages, making him an inadvertent classic of contemporary Ukrainian literature. Andruchowytsch has received numerous national and international awards, including the Antonowytsch Prize, the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize, the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding and the Hannah Arendt Prize. In 2016 he was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institute and in 2022 the Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf. In his native Ukraine, he is vice-president of the Ukrainian Writers’ Union (AUP).

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What others say:

“The great mastery of this novelist: always personal, clever and vivid. Sometimes melancholic, sometimes mocking, never sentimental.” (Welt am Sonntag)

“Juri Andruchowytsch is a passionate advocate of the European idea and represents Ukraine’s identity as a cultural nation. He reminds Europe that freedom and human rights are being defended in Ukraine at the forefront.” (Jury statement for the award of the Heine Prize 2022)

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