Buy Book "Museum of abandoned secrets" in Ukrainian

No wonder the novel is called an outstanding work of Ukrainian culture of the era of independence.

I am reading the first novel by our Ukrainian writer and I already understand her style a little bit.

The author has recreated both the wartime and postwar periods and the main love story of Daryna and Adrian in an unrealistically cool and authentic way.

I can’t say that the book is easy to read or comprehend, but there is something incredible about it. It is truly so Ukrainian, because I read it while my parents’ native village was being bombed by the occupiers. That’s why the book will always be symbolic for me.

I especially remember the interview with Daryna Hoshchynska and Vladyslava Matusevych. The line of their true female friendship is very skillfully, humanely, and painfully conveyed.

The protagonist goes through a lot of moments, but her main goal, the creation of the film, finally succeeds. Also, the main character is shown in a very unusual, strong, real way. I really liked the part about Adrian’s dreams.

Especially now, during the war, the book is very relevant, because many moments, especially political ones, show a corrupt, sickly, dictatorial Russia.

I will definitely continue to get acquainted with Oksana Zabuzhko)

Before I could get at least some minimal idea, I had to work hard intellectually to consciously analyze, isolate the essence, and understand the author’s message without distorting the meaning. I read every single paragraph over and over again. No book has ever been so difficult for me. Honestly, I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished and closed it.

But perhaps this is exactly how Newton felt when the apple fell on his head. It was a discovery. My own personal discovery. Which I somehow made on my own.

This book keeps you in suspense, you won’t be able to relax and take a little nap while reading. It is a challenge. It’s either you or you. Long sentences that start on one page and end on the next; complex syntactic constructions; author’s neologisms; storylines that are constantly intertwined; main characters who are united by the past, present and future.

I cannot but recommend this book. Visit the museum of abandoned secrets. It is a must read for those who like challenges. The book will surprise you, and you will surprise yourself when you can finish it.

There are books that make you think. “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko is one of them. At the beginning of the novel, I thought about what a difficult book it was: it was hard to read and understand. One sentence can take up a whole page. By the time you read it, you’ve already forgotten what it was about. And the author’s language is difficult, you don’t understand all the words, although I’ve never complained about my knowledge of Ukrainian. And then: I got sucked in. Like quicksand. And I started thinking not about how many pages were left to read, and not about how relieved I would feel when I turned the last page, but about the characters in the book, how they got out of the “surprises of fate” ride, and then I thought, “What would I do in their place?” At the same time, you see the whole era in a different way, through the prism of other people’s lives, and you can hardly believe that it is fiction, because everything is so real.

This book can replace a history textbook. And not even in the sense that it is about the postwar period or the times of the deep Soviet Union, but about the new history of Ukraine. The history of an already independent country. And there are things that were written in 2009 about events that took place even earlier, but they are so relevant today! Year after year, personnel changes, but there are no changes.

This book is a message! It has a lot of politics, but even more messages for people! People, live, love, create, and stay true to yourself, don’t sell out for money or power! Because if you lose what is burning inside you, there will be only an emptiness that is almost impossible to fill.

Partly, this book by Oksana Zabuzhko evokes associations with Lina Kostenko’s book “Notes of a Ukrainian Samashodshchy” because both of these books describe the changes in the consciousness of Ukrainians after the first Maidan.

Oksana Zabuzhko shows us a Ukraine that has changed, describing certain episodes of the recent past that will never return.

The plot of the book is quite prosaic: the main character Daryna becomes interested in a photograph of the Ukrainian insurgent Olena Dovhan. The girl tries to find the woman’s relatives to learn more facts about her biography. When she meets Olena’s grandson, she falls in love with him. In addition, Oksana Zabuzhko simultaneously shows us another love storyline, that of Olena and the rebel. Andriy. Sometimes it is difficult to navigate in time in the book, because there are quite a few time jumps. There are three time periods: the Second World War and the insurgency, the Soviet period, and the recent past of Ukraine, namely the events of the Orange Revolution and a few years later. The book forces us to reflect on the present of our country, the foundations of which were laid in the past, and the prospects for our country in the future and our place in the civilizational dimension of the twenty-first century.

The discovery and knowledge of those who lived on this land before you, who loved, suffered, and fought to the death for the right to be a Ukrainian, to be a Ukrainian, is the discovery of the Museum. And the abandoned secrets are the memory that the Soviets and their servants, and later the descendants of the “glorious” Chekists, have been trying to erase all along.

An old photograph, miraculously preserved, depicting four boys and a girl in UPA uniforms, in the middle of the forest, with sadness and courage sealed in their eyes, changes the reality of a contemporary journalist, a young, sexy intellectual Daryna Hoshchynska. She decides, or rather feels the need, to create a historical documentary film – an investigation into the circumstances of the death of Hela Dovgan, the mysterious, exquisite blonde from the photograph.

In a strange, almost magical way, the dead establish a connection with Daryna and her newfound love, Adrian Watamaniuk, a descendant of the Dovhans. It seems that the lovers are doomed to live out the life that was taken from the suffering people in 1947, betrayed and forced to make one last heroic gesture: blowing up the NKVD and themselves during a raid.

Daryna also has to dispel modern devils: to find out the truth about the death of her close friend Vlada Martusevych in a car accident, and to plunge into the jungle of contemporary Ukrainian politics.

A book of emotions, national memory, and the will to live.