The Dress-Up Game is a collection of short, autobiographical frontline prose written in 2022–2025.
The Dress-Up Game is the book’s central metaphor, symbolising a person who puts on a military uniform while simultaneously losing part of their identity. The pieces explore the protagonist’s inner transformations, as he is filled with fears and doubts. This book is a continuation of Chekh’s Point Zero (2017) about his experience serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2015–2016.
In Ukraine, it was published by Meridian Czernowitz in 2025. The translation for the Swedish edition was done by David Shibeka.
"This work allowed me to take a fresh look at certain details, embedded meanings, or allusions in the text. Because not everything that is obvious to us is obvious to them. Even to those who are not that far removed from the Ukrainian subject. In short, with each translation an author receives a new reading of their own texts," Chekh shared.
In Sweden, the book is already available for pre-order for €33.
Artem Chekh is a Ukrainian writer and serviceman. He is the author of the books District "D” (2019), Who Are You? (2021), Song of the Open Road (2024), and others. He is a laureate of the Gogol Literary Prize (2018), the Joseph Conrad Literary Prize (2019), Poland’s Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage (2019), and the BBC Book of the Year Award (2021).