Amadoka - Sofia Andrukhovych

Amadoka is the name of a novel whose protagonist, disfigured beyond recognition in one of the hot spots in eastern Ukraine, survives by a miracle. However, this is a dubious consolation, as his severe injuries have led to a complete loss of memory. He cannot recall his name, where he comes from, nor any close person or fragment of his past life. It is in this state that a woman finds him—her love and patience capable of performing miracles. She reaches into the deepest layers of forgetfulness and memory, piecing together the fragmented, broken consciousness, weaving a shared history from the scattered remnants. Amadoka is the largest lake in Europe, located on the territory of present-day Ukraine. It was first mentioned by Herodotus and was depicted on maps by medieval cartographers for centuries, only to disappear suddenly and completely. How do great lakes vanish without a trace? How do entire worlds and cultures disappear—and what remains instead? Can there be a connection between the Jewish Catastrophe in Eastern Europe and the destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia during Stalin's repressions? Can the forgetting of one individual reach down through several generations? Do the signs and scars of shattered memory bind us together? And can love and patience allow us to touch the consciousness of another person?