“Feuerpause” (Cease-Fire), a play by Ukrainian poet, author, and soldier Serhiy Zhadan, was published on Sept. 29, 2025 by German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag. The book was initially released in Ukraine by Meridian Chernowitz in 2020.
“Death brings everyone together: while their deceased mother is lying upstairs in the bedroom, in the kitchen, two brothers see each other for the first time in a long time. Anton, the older of the two, has headed off in search of greener pastures. Tolik, the younger brother, has stayed behind, despite the smouldering war and the increasingly precarious conditions. But now the bridge has been blown up, the post office destroyed, the fields set ablaze, the water supply cut off. The heat builds. There is a knock at the door, Aunt Shura walks in, accompanied by two women here to tidy up and wash the body. Over and over, there are knocks at the door, more people from the village come in, the house of the dead woman is filled with life, it becomes at once refuge and trap. They are all suspicious of one another, have spied on each other and betrayed one another. How do you start a conversation when language has been broken and your ability to understand one another has been lost, disappearing somewhere in the time before the war?” the annotation reads.
Ukrainian edition book cover
“The play is set in the summer of 2014 in the Donbas, where Ukraine is being attacked by armed troops. In laconic language and with a great deal of situational comedy, Zhadan creates an atmospherically dense scene, in which his figures can no longer avoid each other. Forming a forced community riven by hostility.”
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Main image: UkrInform
Copy editing: Joy Tataryn