On February 7th, Razom Book Club gathered to discuss Victoria Amelina’s book “Dom’s Dream Kingdom” (Дім для Дома), and the following afternoon they met with Victoria Amelina virtually.
“As if we’ve been reading the same book for several years,” said Irena Chalupa, “a book about memory, how to prevent forgetting.” Indeed, in the book Dom’s Dream Kingdom, the Tsiliik family, who live in Stanislav Lem’s old apartment at 4 Lepkoho Street, do not know how to talk to each other about the past. How to tell about the fact that people who are no longer in Lviv used to live in this apartment, how to remember a family history that you want to forget so much, how to find out who you are, if your parents have been trying to forget for many years.
This is how Yana Zavada, another member of the Razom Book Club, described the conversation: “In our book club we have already read about the heterogeneous Donbass in “The Death of Leo Cecil Made Sense”. Now it was a topic of heterogeneous Lviv (some in the club were very surprised by this, by the way). In these literary parallels, I see a movement towards each other. We are the one country. Cool. Original.”
In the words of the novel:
“The house where you are remembered is scattered like the wreckage of frozen rivers above the Earth. I can now say “my city”, but it is as absurd as saying “my air”. Even the air we breathe has already been someone’s and will be. Our air while it is with us. Our house, our home while it is with us. And we are all always in this home – each at our own depth.”
These topics were discussed with to Victoria among others, such as why she is not writing now as much as she is preparing for the New York Literary Festival and what she is planning to do in Poland with the Conrad Scholarship that Victoria won earlier this year. will begin in April. We invite you to watch this conversation, and if it inspires you, then read Victoria Amelina’s book “Дім Для Дома”.
Learn more about Razom Book Club and join the Facebook group to stay informed about the upcoming readings and meetings with Ukrainian authors.
