The Orphanage, Serhiy Zhadan
The Orphanage, Serhiy Zhadan
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

The Orphanage
A Novel

Author: Serhiy Zhadan, Reilly Costigan-Humes, Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

Narrator: Matthew Lloyd Davies

Unabridged: 10 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/27/2022

Synopsis

A devastating story of the struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern UkraineIf every war needs its master chronicler, Ukraine has Serhiy Zhadan, one of Europe’s most promising novelists. Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher, sets out for the orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives, now in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home.Written with a raw intensity, this is a deeply personal account of violence that will be remembered as the definitive novel of the war in Ukraine.

About Serhiy Zhadan

Serhiy Zhadan, widely considered to be one of the most important young writers in Ukraine, is also the author of Mesopotamia and What We Live For, What We Die For: Selected Poems.

About Matthew Lloyd Davies

Matthew Lloyd Davies is a veteran actor, director, and Audie Award–winning audiobook narrator. Highlights of his acting career include regular appearances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre in the West End, on international tours, and in award-winning television shows and films. He has experience in radio, a master’s degree in directing, and extensive experience in presenting at corporate events.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark

What a book. Is it a novel about a journey through a dystopian hell-scape? No. This particular hell-scape is in the real world and it has a veracity that gripped me from the first pages. A thirty-five year old teacher in eastern Ukraine, a man who has tried his best to keep his head down and to pret......more

Goodreads review by Justin

An overwhelming, heartbreaking novel that closely resembles the actual hellscape of Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Notably the Battle of Debaltseve from 2015. Though the context is that prior conflict, I imagine most details are also prophetic to the current war in Ukraine. Descriptions are excruciating......more

Goodreads review by Linda

“Mornings filled with domestic tasks; a job you’ve gotten used to like its one of your outfits—it’s not too constricting, it doesn’t get in the way. Quiet evenings, dark nights. Actually, there is so much joy, so much warmth in all of this. You wind up here in the middle of hell to feel how much you......more

Quotes

“Brilliantly rendered into English by Reilly Costigan‑Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, [The Orphanage] draws on Dante to offer a vivid glimpse of the current inferno in Eastern Ukraine.” Times Literary Supplement (London)

“A nightmarish, raw vision of contemporary eastern Ukraine under siege…The translators deserve credit for rendering Zhadan’s prose into colloquial English. This unblinkingly reveals a country’s devastation and its people’s passionate determination to survive.” Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)

“Zhadan is a master of metaphors, and he creates very vivid portraits of ordinary people living in a battle zone.” Literary Hub

“A gray, marginal world in which life is punctuated by bursting shells and the ebb and flow of soldiers from either side…Ambient dread gives the novel a dystopian flavor, but Zhadan is writing about real life.” New York Review of Books

“Matthew Lloyd Davies is the strong, somber voice of this searing novel…He brings across the enormity of Pasha’s task…Fans of international fiction and those wishing to learn more about this conflict, or pay tribute to it, will find much to admire here.” AudioFile

Awards

  • New York Times Pick
  • Publishers Weekly Best Book
  • EBRD Literature Prize
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