Romancing The Empire: Central European Nostalgia In Iurii Andrukhovych

A growing interest in the Central European geopolitical space and cultural identity and a desire to create a coherent social discourse and community based on the Central European idea is strongly present in the countries of the ex-Soviet bloc. Iurii Andrukhovych is one of the many contemporary authors representing the region who appear to be very conscious of the in-between-ness of its cultural space, i.e. of its simultaneous belonging and non-belonging within the historical and cultural constructs of the West and the East. The topoi of Europe and Ukraine, more specifically of Western Ukraine, as a real place, a fiction, a mythology, a narrative and a locus of desire, persist in most of his writing. Andrukhovych engages in almost paradoxical geopolitical games, situating Ukraine within Europe and vis-a-vis Erope, both as its inherent part and an impossible imposter. Adapted from the source document.