The Secrets of a Writer's Desk

This documentary book invites you to delve into the history of the RoLit Writers' House in Kyiv — a hub of 20th-century Ukrainian literature. It's where such prominent figures as Pavlo Tychyna, Maksym Rylsky, Mykola Bazhan, Yuriy Yanovsky, Ivan Kocherha, Ostap Vyshnia, Oleksandr Korniichuk, Ulas Samchuk, Oleksiy Kundzich, Oles Honchar, and many others lived or visited. You will get to know the book's characters as real people who experienced joys and sorrows, creative triumphs and failures, funny episodes and life dramas. The book reveals the realities of daily literary life in a country that had become a genuine dystopia: secret collaboration with the NKVD, forced falsification of autobiographies, difficulties in professional self-realization, plagiarism as a path to a career, the destruction of competitors through "administrative resources," issues of royalties and banned books, housing problems, and complex relationships with relatives.
The research is based on little-known facts found in numerous archives or recorded from oral accounts. The authors structure the narrative like a captivating detective story, examining various versions and inviting the reader to join them in exploring the behind-the-scenes secrets of the Soviet literary process.
This book will be of interest to those who want to learn the unvarnished, bitter, but true history of Ukrainian literature, as well as to everyone who loves it and seeks to understand it more deeply.