It is unbelievable, but our Kickstarter campaign to publish Rafeyenko’s book in English has reached the initial goal amount of $5,500 — just two days after we launched it!
We THANK everyone so very much for incredible support of this important book.
Kickstarter campaign will still run for another month as per the site’s rules. The amount collected will cover the absolute minimum necessary to complete the translation, but the overall cost of the translation and rights to the book are a lot higher. And so every cent we collect above the initial goal amount will still go towards supporting the work of Volodymyr Rafeyenko and towards fully covering the cost of the translation so that the writer and the translator can continue their work!
Volodymyr Rafeyenko had to leave his home city of Donetsk immediately after the occupation by Russian-sponsored forces has begun. He started writing about the traumatic experience right away, too: first in the novel ‘Longue Duree’ (Dovhi chasy), which appeared in Russian and in Ukrainian (in Marianna Kiyanovska’s translation), and later in ‘Mondegreen.’
Volodymyr left his home when he was 45, having to abandon everything he had worked to achieve, and beginning from scratch in Kyiv. In one of his interviews, he compared the process to what Johann Sebastian Bach must have experienced when he had to bury four children from his first marriage, and then seven children from his second marriage. That experience of excruciating pain always accompanies Volodymyr, who now lives at a fellow writer’s dacha in Bucha near Kyiv, where he continues to write and from where he teaches literature courses online.
We believe that it is incredibly important for the world to learn more about such experiences that many Ukrainian citizens have gone through as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Your contribution allows us to change the way the world perceives Ukraine — and it will hopefully generate more support for our young democracy. There are many facets to Ukraine’s history and culture, and not all of them are tragic. With this campaign, we’re beginning with what’s very critical right now, but we hope to be able to count on your support in the future, too, when we campaign to translate and publish other works of Ukrainian literature in English.
Please stand with us as we do it.
You can learn more and contribute to the campaign at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/razomforukraine/mondegreen-by-volodymyr-rafeyenko
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