Sofia Andrukhovych’s novel Amadoka about the Russo-Ukrainian war has been published in Lithuanian translation. This was reported by the Science and Encyclopaedic Publishing Centre of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.
According to the description, the protagonist of Amadoka is disfigured beyond recognition in one of the hotspots in eastern Ukraine and miraculously survives. The severe injuries he sustains lead to a complete loss of memory: the man remembers neither his name nor where he comes from, and cannot recall a single loved one or any fragment of his previous life. He is found by a woman whose love and patience reach into the deepest layers of oblivion and memory, connecting the scattered scraps of his damaged consciousness and stitching together a shared story. Amadoka is the largest lake in Europe, located in what is now Ukraine, first mentioned by Herodotus and depicted on maps for several centuries by medieval cartographers until its sudden and total disappearance. The novel aims to raise the question of how great lakes evaporate without a trace, how entire worlds and entire cultures vanish — and what remains in their place.
The Lithuanian translation was done by Zita Marėnė. The novel was published by the Science and Encyclopaedic Publishing Centre of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, which called the book one of the most significant works of contemporary Ukrainian literature, exploring themes of individual and collective memory.
“This is a monumental book, at the heart of which is the search for human identity, trauma, layers of history and the impact of the past on the present,” the Science and Encyclopaedic Publishing Centre of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania notes.
The Lithuanian edition was partly funded by the Ukrainian Book Institute.
In Ukraine, the book was published by The Old Lion Publishing House in 2020.
As a reminder, in 2023 Andrukhovych received the Sholem Aleichem Prize for Amadoka, which is awarded for promoting the spiritual and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples, and in 2025 she received the International Literary Prize of the Cultural Centre and City Theatre of Stockholm.
About Sofia Andrukhovych:
- Ukrainian writer, translator and essayist;
- among Andrukhovych’s other works are Felix Austria, Salmon, The Hen Constellation (co-authored with Mariana Prokhasko), Katananche and others;
- winner of a number of awards, including the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Prize, LitAkcent of the Year, Book of the Year-BBC and others.