Title: "Fantastic Kiev/Kyiv between Baroque and Modern"

 

Abstract: I will discuss two fantastic representations of the same city, created in Lusina’s serial novel “Kiev’s Witches”, which is written in Russian and in Danylenko’s novel “Love in the Baroque’s Style” – written in Ukrainian. Both authors invent “historical sources”, animate buildings and such architectural details as atlantes, caryatides and mascarons. Both Kiev and Kyiv are connected to hell through caves and tunnels. However, in Lusina’s books the supernatural is manifested by Modern, while in Danylenko’s book Kyiv is the city of Baroque.  

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Bio: Larisa Fialkova works as an Associate Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa, Israel. Published papers on fantastic in Bulgakov’s, Andrei Bely’s, Remizov’s writings as well as on contemporary Russian and Ukrainian fantastika, e.g. "The Khazarian Code" in Contemporary Russian Prose: Oleg Jurjev, Dennis Sobolev, Dmitrii Bykov”, “Mirage of Happiness in Russian Dystopia (Late 20th-Early 21st. Century)”, “Where do the Rails Lead To? Rail Transport’s Mythology in Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian Fantastic Fiction (Preliminary Remarks)”, “M. Bulgakov, A. Akhmatova and N. Gumilev as Literary Characters in Contemporary Russian Fantastic Fiction” and “Alternative Slavic Fantasy of American Writers” etc.  

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