A really strong, challenging stream-of-consciousness novel about being a Ukrainian woman and poet and writer, and what that 'Ukrainian' means towards the end of the 20th century -- all the people who withstood Soviet oppression, all the people who were broken by it, and now here our protagonist is, able to write in her own language but knowing that nobody is likely to read it, knowing that most people in the 'civilised world' don't even really know that Ukraine *has* a language and a cultural tradition.  All of this plays out personally as well as on larger stages, and by the end of the book

the protagonist has drawn some very direct lines between the ways she lets men treat her, and the way those men have been treated as soldiers and members of an oppressed group... lots of lines of trauma, intersecting, and a lot of good vision, and no clear answers because it is not the sort of thing there are answers for.

   I don't think my review really does it justice, but I am very glad I read it, and I will both read more by this author & reread this one in time.