One of the best pieces, ‘The Power of Beauty’, while relying strongly on the sense of a speaking voice, imaginatively parallels two moments of epiphany. The first is a painting by a Russian in which two Soviet soldiers are caught by the beauty of Raphael’s painting of the Madonna. ‘One of the soldiers is holding his helmet, removed as if out of respect; the other, wounded, seems frozen in mid-movement.’

Many see this as ‘“A typical made-to­order Soviet socialist painting! ... A blatant piece of propoganda!”’’. The protagonist then recounts his experience of the ‘ridiculous evacuation of Kiev’ and shows an actual moment of epiphany which he experienced. Amid the chaos, death and blasphemy there is a moment of illumination. ‘On the far side of the ditch, on a small mound, stood a naked young woman. … She was wringing the brassiere and panties she had removed, sending a stream of muddy water to the ground. She stood there unmoving, indifferent to her surroundings and the dozens of male eyes fixed on her. Facing the marsh, with tightly pursed lips, she stared with wide-open eyes in the direction of Kiev.’ I would have preferred the story to end without the over-explicit moral that even Russian soldiers are people. Yet, I’ve been taught to read symbolically, others haven’t had the privilege of my education or the benefit of cultural exposure which included symbolic interpretation.

Some of the stories are reworked folk-tales, others are reminiscences of personal history; painful to read because the horror, the confusion and hurt are so ineptly told. There are many stories which remain untold because guilt, fear, and total inability to confront what was done and to whom, prevent the emigré from telling. To have power over language to recount the heart of darkness, is something to wait for in Ukrainian writing in English.