Volodymyr Rafeyenko is a prize-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary critic from Donetsk, who was forced to leave his city in 2014 and became a “temporarily displaced person.” Four years later he wrote and published Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death — a powerful novel about a person uprooted and transplanted to a new place as a result of the war. This novel examines the psychological fractures this trauma causes, everyday difficulties of such an abrupt change, the sustained shock from the loss of home, and the longing for what’s left behind.
Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death, translated into English by Mark Andryczyk, is the first novel Rafeyenko wrote in Ukrainian, the language he learned as a response to russia’s occupation of his hometown. His previous novel about russia’s occupation of Donbas was written in russian. It will be published in English later this year in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature. Volodymyr was living in Bucha when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened. He spent a month under the russian occupation, an experience that made him further re-examine his relationship with his native language. He is currently working on his next novel. (*The spelling of “russia” and “russian” has been modified above at the author’s request.)