Dartmouth Events

Amadoka by Sofia Andrukhovych, originally published in Ukrainian in 2020, weaves through the complicated tapestry of Ukrainian history with personal stories. The author deals with three traumatic eras: Stalinist repressions of Ukrainian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century in the USSR, the incarnation of the Holocaust during World War II in Ukraine, and the Russian invasion of the country’s east and southeast in 2014. The novel’s central metaphor, reflected in its name, is a grand lake that existed in antiquity in today’s Podillia region of Ukraine. Much like the lake, people and cultures are vulnerable to oblivion, which is both one of the book’s themes and something that Ukrainian culture strives to avoid.  Curator Veronika Yadukha is part of TRANSLATORIUM, a Ukrainian NGO working with literary translation that promotes translation to the public, fosters the professional community, and platforms projects in translation between different forms of art. AMADOKA sprung from Yadukha’s particular interest in the latter, which is also the subject of her academic work at Dartmouth. Composers Albert Saprykin, Boris Loginov, and Maxim Kolomiiets each translated one volume of the novel into music, creating distinct pieces that come together in a singular listening experience. The ensemble performing AMADOKA will include musicians both from Ukraine and local to the Upper Valley, and the concert will be followed by a discussion with the curator and composers, offering the audience further insight into both the novel’s and the composition’s context.

Free and open to the public.

Dartmouth Sponsors; Harris Program, Music Department, Digital Ethnic Futures Lab, Comparative Literature Program