Ключ журавлів

Description

Published in association with the Lviv-based Piramida Press, Kliuch zhuravliv (A Flight of Cranes) is an almost 800-page novel portraying the lives of two generations of immigrants from western-Ukrainian Galicia region to Western Canada. In this major literary work, Sigmund Bychinsky offers a fascinating story dealing with the pioneer Ukrainian experience in Canada and covering a time span from 1892 to 1922. Depicting the fate of several families from the village of Opari in the Drohobych district, the novel describes their decision to leave, the trip overseas, and the difficult first years on a homestead. In a compelling manner, the text documents the gradual adaptation of the main protagonists, the Fedyk family, and their fellow emigrants to their new lives on the Canadian prairies. Assimilation, discrimination, participation in electoral politics and the Great War, and bitter religious rivalries among Ukrainians are among the many issues dealt with in the novel, which includes loosely autobiographical episodes, as well as historical events.Bychinsky began work on his novel during the early 1930s and completed it in 1945. However, despite his efforts to publish his manuscript in Winnipeg, the epic tale never made it into print, and is now published for the first time.Kliuch zhuravliv is not only an important landmark in the Ukrainian Canadian literature, but also a unique historical document dealing with a significant and understudied chapter in the history of Canada. The author himself aptly defined his novel as: ‘a chronicle and a novel of real type, without embellishment, but with a strong desire to portray faithfully the lives of our [Ukrainian] folk in a foreign environment … and among foreign people.’