Yuriy Andrukhovich

Yurii Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in the Carpathian city of Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanyslaviv). He spent his childhood and youth there as well—in one of those places where the existence of Ukrainian identity is beyond doubt, if only because no other identity ever really took root in this western Ukrainian city. There is simply no issue of bilingualism here. And if the Lviv native Alekseieva could become Marina, the most popular writer in Russia, then from Andrukhovych there could have emerged only Andrukhovych—one of the founders of Ukrainian postmodernism, a participant in the early Rukh, a poet, a patriot. He graduated from the editorial department of the Ukrainian Printing Institute in Lviv (1982) and the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute in Moscow (1991). Andrukhovych is not only the most heavily promoted Ukrainian writer in the West, but also the least genteel among them. One of the prominent figures of the Stanislaviv phenomenon.

Patriarch of the literary group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesque-Balagan-Buffoonery)

During the events on the Maidan in Kyiv in 2013–2014, the writer supported the people and opposed the then regime