Ukrainian literature offers a rich way into the country’s history, culture and identity.

As more Ukrainian works become available in English translation, readers have an expanding range of voices and perspectives to discover. But where to begin?

Here are five books to help get you started. These five books take readers through time and across Ukraine.

They are presented here in acclaimed translations by leading writers, translators, scholars and cultural practitioners.

Read more: Want to support Ukraine? Read its books

1. The City by Valerian Pidmohylnyi (1928)

Translated and introduced by Maxim Tarnawsky in 2025

Originally written in 1927 and published a year later in Kharkiv during Soviet rule, The City became available as a complete English translation for the first time in 2025.

This classic modernist novel is set in the early 1920s in post-revolutionary Kyiv amid rapid industrialisation. Stepan Radchenko, the provincial protagonist, moves to Kyiv to seek his fortune, but a series of events changes him irrevocably and life does not turn out as he had expected.

Pidmohylnyi, a writer and translator, was arrested and incarcerated in 1934. He was shot along........

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