How the Cherry Orchard Was Chopped Down, or The Long Road from Bad Ems

In her new book, dedicated to the memory of Oksana Miyakovska-Radish, archivist of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in New York, Oksana Zabuzhko turns to her favorite – a blend of memoir, literary studies, and intellectual detective work. The author takes the reader on an exciting journey through a century and a half, from a family photograph in a New York living room to the Ukrainian city of Taganrog and children's performances of «The Muscovite Magician» in the Chekhov house. The goal of this journey is to find an answer to one of the most important questions of our time: for what history lessons missed in the 19th century is Ukraine still forced to pay in the 21st?