Transit Culture and Postcolonical Trauma

This book explores transitional post-Soviet cultural consciousness in Ukraine at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The main themes in the book are postcolonial traumas in relation to past empires and old historiographical narratives; post-totalitarian consciousness, which is characterized by sociocultural ruptures, postcolonial resentment, and intergenerational crises; and post-memory as a means of overcoming historical and familial traumas. Against the backdrop of the Chornobyl catastrophe, the book examines the meeting of different generations and views the clown Verka Serduchka as a mediator between the transition from the Soviet to the post-Soviet world.  The book focuses on three significant Ukrainian novels written between the two <i>Maidans: The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko</i> (2009), <i>Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan</i> (2010), and <i>Notes of a Ukrainian Madman by Lina Kostenko</i> (2010).