Overview

A KirkusBest Indie Book of the Year & a Library JournalBest World Literature read, from Pulitzer Prize-winning AP Journalist and Director/Producer/Writer of the Academy Award-winning documentary20 Days in Mariupol ""[A] book for our times-vivid enough to grab us and not let go.""-Kirkus Reviews(starred review) ""A powerful psychological thriller about borderline situations in life, hopes and dreams. Written against the backdrop of the war, before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the story acquires an additional passionate and humanistic significance."" - Andrey Kurkov, author ofGrey Bees ""[T]his timely novel from a Ukrainian author excels at examining the connection between reality and dreams and exploring the effects of war on the human psyche."" -Library Journal The Dreamtimeis a fusion of documentary and military fiction inspired by the author's experience as an award-winning war correspondent that offers a unique and gritty point of view on the horrors of war through four intertwining narratives. Parallel storylines from a guilt-ridden doctor trying to exorcise his demons by exposing himself to war; a young woman tending to her ailing father as the bombs fall around them in Russian-occupied Slovyansk; a mysterious sociopath playing a cat-and-mouse game; and a forensic expert solving a murder case while trying to save her marriage with a discharged soldier bring a raw intensity and a deeply personal connection to the effects of war. As the threads of their stories unfurl, through harrowing scenes of personal and collective trauma, an enigmatic pattern emerges. Shifting from Ukraine's war-torn Donbas to southern Europe and southeast Asia,The Dreamtimeties together themes of existential conflict, the blurred line between reality and dreams, and how easily the boundary dissolves between waking life and nightmare. Originally published in Kyiv in 2020,The Dreamtimehas been well received by critics around the world and praised for its realism in depicting war, for its creative literary depiction of how dreams reflect the psyche, and for its masterly prose.

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9781644699881

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Reviews

The Dreamtime is a dark, multi-layered, modern Ukrainian war novel. It demonstrates that war doesn't only occur on the front line, but that it quickly and relentlessly corrodes society, breaking down its structure. Chernov's dense, labored prose is tightly intertwined like blades of grass after a storm. But when engaged with, these interweaving shadows and voices gradually become clear and transparent to the reader. -- Serhiy Zhadan The Dreamtime is about survival, living through war, mental illness, and alcoholism in a world where even love has jagged edges. The parallel storylines make it a page turner as we look for moments of hope and vulnerability. This is the creation of a new history. - Olena Jennings, author of Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021) An ambitious yet highly readable book, Mstyslav Chernov's The Dreamtime builds on the tragically rich personal experience of this acclaimed and fearless photographer whose deeply moving images from the world's conflict zones, and especially from the war in his native Ukraine, are now seared in our memory. This novel helps us understand how life goes on in wartime--and how it changes us irrevocably. An impressive literary debut that successfully transfers Chernov's keen eye and psychological insight to the page. -- Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas Kaleidoscopic and deeply unsettling, The Dreamtime depicts how the routine of war dissolves boundaries between civilian and soldier, care and violence, waking life and nightmare. Chernov has written an expansive, thought-provoking Ukrainian novel for the early post-Maidan era. -- Sonya Bilocerkowycz, 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow; author of On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine (2019) Reading the news about and being an eyewitness to the Russian war in Ukraine, there is a strong desire to wish that the current events are all a dream and that one only needs to wake up for it all to disappear. In his novel, Mstyslav Chernov skillfully captures the war's origins, paying attention to important details of the individual choices and tragedies of his characters. Drawing on the images and testimonies he has collected during his time as a war photographer, he masterfully combines the real with the fictional to capture his and others' unique experiences, revealing another angle of war--one that is intimate and hidden. In doing so, he creates a story where everything may be true, but may also be the author's dream. But, being in someone else's dream is one of the most fascinating things, isn't it? -- Kateryna Iakovlenko, Ukrainian visual culture scholar, critic, and writer

Author Information

Mstyslav Chernov, which won the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He was named Ukrainian Photographer of the Year in 2013 and 2015. He was born in Eastern Ukraine. More information on Chernov's journalism and exhibitions can be found on his website mstyslav.com and his Instagram instagram.com/mstyslav.chernov.

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