Chrysanthemums

For readers aged 16+

Chrysanthemums is an autobiographical novel by Ukrainian writer Ulyana Kravchenko, the first Galician poetess and master of modernist prose. The nostalgic, retrospective narrative reveals the historical context of the era in which the future author grew up. Carefully and tenderly portraying her first seventeen years in a small town in Lviv region at the end of the 19th century, Ulyana Kravchenko invites readers to look back at the past, preserved in her memory. The girl matured quickly, and her white room, a small table with drawers, and a slightly dusty piano seemed to be frozen in time. Confessing, observing, questioning herself, and revealing the paradoxes of her personality, Ulyana Kravchenko captures the life of the Galician intelligentsia of that era and one of the most important decisions in her life — the choice of national and cultural identity.