Eight years before the Russian invasion was launched on February 24, a popular Ukrainian uprising in Kyiv overthrew its Moscow-backed regime in favor of moving toward the European Union — an act for which Russia has been punishing Ukraine ever since. These events have inspired Kalani Pickhart’s debut novel I Will Die in a Foreign Land which portrays a citizenry refusing to submit to a Russian takeover. The wave of protests during the 2013 Euromaidan uprising in Kyiv simmers in the background and flares in the foreground. The timeliness of this novel may be too obvious to belabor here – but it should also be noted that we can depend on our world’s literature to illuminate a country’s cultural strengths and values, and to retell the ancient sagas that underlie a nation’s self-awareness.
A welcoming host, Pickhart opens the door in an eloquent prologue:
“Where does it begin? Ah, ah. Depends on who you ask. It could begin with Scythians and Cimmerians … Vladymyr the Great. One thing is certain: it doesn’t just begin here, my friend. It doesn’t begin or end with Stalin. It doesn’t begin or end with Yanukovich. Or Poroshenko. Or Zelensky. It doesn’t begin or end with Putin. The war has always been quiet: like a pulse, it can be forgotten. Unnoticed. Like a pulse, we can feel it as long as we’re still here. Lean your ear onto the chest of a corpse and you’ll hear it: emptiness like an echo. Have you ever listened to your wristwatch when it’s stopped ticking? The sound of it — that aching hollowness. Like a dry fountain cracking in the sun. We’ve known thirst. We’ve known hunger here, too. Ah, ah. My friend. You ask us where to begin — how can we? How many times have you carried your dead through your streets? We sing the history of Kyiv: Come, and you will see.”
The chapters emerge in short bursts, panning the characters in staccato shots. The lives of four main characters are intertwined — Katya, Misha, Slava, and Sasha — thrown together during a bitter winter in Kyiv. Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president at the time, had opted for a closer alliance with Russia rather than signing a referendum with the European Union. Thousands of protesting Ukrainians built a tent city in Kyiv’s main square and spent weeks in peaceful dissent until the military’s Berkut Police fired into the crowd, killing over a hundred people.
Katya, a Ukrainian-American doctor from Boston, operates in a makeshift hospital at St. Michael’s golden-domed monastery, a church so old it bears traces of the Mongol invasion 800 years before:
“A priest calls out to her — Доктор, будь ласка — Doctor, please — Katya kills the cigarette under her boot and goes.
All empires fall. First the Mongols destroyed parts of the church. Then the Soviets. Then it was rebuilt. Gold and blue, the church is grotesquely beautiful. It looks like Byzantium. Byzantium: the word so full of promise. The new Rome. She has seen pictures of the Sistine Chapel and it must be something like this. Here, there are paintings on the walls, the ceiling, the columns. Bright sashes and wings on cherubs, gowns and crowns decorating saints. All looking, seeing. Vigilance. She felt they could see every part of her. All that raw ache.”
There is Misha, a mining engineer whose father worked at Chernobyl. He erects protest barricades. Then comes Slava, a young activist whose mother sold her into sex slavery, who now pleads with Katya to treat Misha after Berkut police strike him brutally in the head. Katya has just removed shrapnel from Sasha, an older Soviet man who played his piano on the street. He is a former KGB agent. Having assembled her fictional quartet, Pickhart begins shepherding the group through a braided storyline.
A traveling band of Kobzari bards appears every so often to convey oral tradition, such as “Plyve Kacha Po Tysyni,” a Lemko folk song:
“My dear mother, what will happen to me
if I die in a foreign land?
Oh, my dearest
you will be buried by strangers.”
The novel’s title ties the song’s message to a poem by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (Kobzar), who was born in Ukraine and died in Russia. Pickhart illustrates how such lore takes on revived signifcicance, juxtaposed with 2014 news bulletins and news reports to create a unique form of literary citizen journalism.
Then Pickhart tucks an old audio cassette into Sasha’s pocket, which Katya finds after she has operated. Sasha’s backstory slowly emerges in successive chapters as Katya listens to the recording — an ingenious polyphonic texture woven by Pickhart.
One chapter consists only of Euromaidan protest posters — with unmissable relevance to today’s war:
“THE NATION IS INVINCIBLE
I AM UKRAINIAN AND I CAN’T KEEP CALM
PUTIN IF YOU LOVE US—LET US GO
FUCK YANUKOVYCH
STOP PUTIN STOP WAR
UKRAINE IS EUROPE
YANUKOVYCH IS NOT UKRAINE
NO PUTIN NO KILLING
VICTORY WILL BE OURS
POLICE WITH THE PEOPLE
ONLY A COWARD WOULD HURT A CHILD
WE DO NOT WANT WAR
RUSSIA, HANDS OFF UKRAINE
NO VIOLENCE AT EUROMAIDAN
UKRAINE IS MY CHILD
I BREATHE FREELY
AGAINST THE POLICE STATE
SHAME IN FRONT OF THE WORLD
I AM A DROP IN THE OCEAN”
Some aspects of I Will Die in a Foreign Land bring to mind Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, such as a brother/sister duo in name and ballet references, or a wife forgiving a husband’s affair — calling it a duty to the State. Judicious selections from other writings deepen the narrative: Euripides, Homer, Milan Kundera.
The novel brings in Holodomor, Chernobyl, mines, oligarchs, journalists, forced labor camps, the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, and the Russian invasion of Crimea. There’s a map and timeline of 2013-2014 events. The cover illustration, an oil painting by August Schenck titled Anguish, is a potent metaphor. (A character list would have been helpful as nicknames and extended family appear.)
Slava’s lover Dascha tells her:
“People are willing to die in protest for their beliefs. For a better life. Today, we fight against Putin. Tomorrow, we fight against hate. This won’t be over for a long time, Slava. Something is coming.”
These are well-rounded characters whose story arcs underscore cause and effect, the power of the arts, repercussions of bottled-up grief, the brother/sisterhood of humanity, and the importance of love and perseverance in a world of terror run amok.
Kalani Pickhart, who has familial roots in Austria and Serbia, expresses her hope in the Afterword: “May this book be a worthy testament for the people of Ukraine.” She is donating a portion of her novel’s proceeds to the Ukrainian Red Cross/ICRC.
[Published by Two Dollar Radio on October 19, 2021, 300 pages, $25.00 hardcover. Also available in audiobook and ebook versions. Paperback coming in June 2022.]