Because Deserters Are Immortal
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The story of a young man caught in the whirlwind of World War 2 in Eastern Europe. Not wishing to fight on any one side, he tries only to survive the nightmare and return home.
Written in a tone of ironic defiance, the author's prose is lucid, vivid and economical, as befits a poet. Perceptive observations of human behaviour often find relevance in today's world of increasing tension and uncertainty.
Described by The Age as "a short, haunting novel, which movingly transcends all boundaries of time and place." World Literature Today calls it "a little masterpiece... without pathos or sentimentality."
Yuri Tkacz
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Born in a working-class suburb of Melbourne, Australia in 1954, Yuri Tkacz grew up speaking no English until he entered school. A warm love for Ukraine and its literature led him to abandon his profession as an engineer, and in 1979 he began to translate Ukrainian authors into English full-time. His published translations include works by a diverse group of authors, such as Igor Kaczurowskyj, Oles Honchar, Anatoly Dimarov, Valeriy Shevchuk, Sergij Kariuk, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Yuri Yanovsky, and Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. He lived and worked in Canada in the early 1980s and in Ukraine in the early 1990s, but has now returned to Melbourne. His translations of Hardly Ever Otherwise by Maria Matios, Hard Times by Ostap Vyshnia, The Lawyer from Lychakiv Street by Andriy Kokotiukha, Precursor by Vasyl Shevchuk, and Boryslav in Flames by Ivan Franko have all been published by Glagoslav Publications.
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