Ulas Samchuk.Darkness: A Novel in Two Parts.New York, 1957

Ulas Samchuk. Darkness: A Novel in Two Parts / language editor — Petro Odarchenko; cover — Petro Kholodnyi.

New York: Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in the U.S., 1957. — 493 pp. — Published partly at the expense of the East European Fund (East European Fund, Inc.). Copyright 1957 by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.

Original publisher's dust jacket by Petro Kholodnyi: on a gray background, the author's name, title, genre, and place of publication in light letters of a stylized font in a frame of wide diagonal stripes; spine is cream. The spine is faded and yellowed, with occasional dark spots on the front cover. The back cover is soiled, with stains and darkening along the spine edge and diagonal crease marks at the top; in the printed line "Price," the amount is handwritten and partially rubbed out. The lower corner of the table of contents page is dog-eared. The block paper is evenly yellowed at the edges, the text is clean, and the block is firm. Condition: good.

First edition, published during the author's lifetime. The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector's interest.

INFORMATION

The novel opens where the Ukrainian person had no voice: at an extraordinary meeting of the party and government leadership of the Ukrainian SSR in the building of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, where Professor Kruglov, the "chief commentator on the general line of the party," arrives from Moscow, sent by Stalin himself. "Darkness" is the second volume of the trilogy "Ost" conceived by Samchuk, a continuation of "Morozov Khutir" (1948); in the publisher's foreword, it is emphasized that this is a completed separate work, only connected with "Ost." Below the last line is the author's date 1948–55, and the book ends with Major Moroz being told: he will be accompanied to Moscow, "we leave in half an hour."

Ulas Samchuk (1905–1987) — prose writer and publicist, author of "Maria" and the trilogy "Volyn," head of the Ukrainian Artistic Movement in post-war Germany; from 1948 he lived in Canada, where he also wrote this novel. The third volume of "Ost" — "Escape from Oneself" — was published only in 1982.

The book was published by the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in the U.S. as part of its program for publishing literary works in the Ukrainian language, with a grant from the East European Fund — a foundation that supported emigrant publications in the 1950s. The language editing was done by literary scholar Petro Odarchenko (1903–2000). The cover was made by Petro Kholodnyi-the-younger (1902–1990) — a monumental painter, author of iconostases and stained glass windows of Ukrainian churches in America, son of the Minister of Education of the Ukrainian People's Republic Petro Kholodnyi, and husband of the writer Natali Livitska-Kholodnyi. The novel was not published in the Ukrainian SSR.