The all-encompassing eye of Ukraine : Ivan Nechui-Levyts'kyi's realist prose / Maxim Tarnawsky.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In The All-Encompassing Eye of Ukraine, Maxim Tarnawsky presents a thorough and much-needed reexamination of Ukrainian novelist Ivan Nechui-Levyts'kyi and his work.

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CHOICE Review

In this timely, impeccably annotated scholarly analysis of the oeuvre of Ivan Nechui-Levyts'kyi (1938-18), Tarnawsky (Univ. of Toronto) questions the communist-era, circumscribed evaluations of this realist Ukrainian writer's prose. Using belletristic, personal papers, works on language and cultural subjects, and historical writings, and staying close to the primary and archival sources, Tarnawsky presents "a synthetic portrait" that disambiguates and promotes this "all encompassing eye" of Ukrainian landscape. This portrait elevates Nechui-Levyts'kyi to the noble ranks of patriotic, national Ukrainian writers, placing him among such greats as Taras Shevchenko and Nikolai Gogol. Noting Nechui-Levyts'kyi's fortunate circumstances--teaching assignments in the western territories of imperial Russia, summer visits home, involvement with Kyiv Hromada, early retirement, solitary life--Tarnawsky asserts that Nechui-Levyts'kyi's novels "defined the post-Shevchenko period in Ukrainian literature." His portraits of Ukrainians, his sympathetic imaging of female sensuality, and his expression of Ukraine as a people, a culture, and a place reveal Nechui-Levyts'kyi's significance, which is magnified in light of the present political goings-on in the land he extols. Offering the first honest and all-encompassing insight into the life and writings of a genuine Ukrainian patriot, this volume is a welcome correction to previous work on the writer and will undoubtedly stimulate future scholars and readers of his works. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Danuta Z. Hutchins, independent scholar