Review of Embroidered Worlds
The Embroidered Worlds anthology, edited by Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Olha Brylova, and Iryna Pasko (Atthis Arts, 2023), collects speculative fiction stories from Ukranian and diaspora authors. A number of the stories are translated from Ukranian and reprinted in English for the first time, allowing English-speaking readers to get a taste of speculative fiction from Ukraine they may never have encountered before.
My favorite stories in the anthology were all translations of Ukranian stories. Myroslava Hornostayeva’s “The Stray Streetcar (A ’90s Businessman’s Tale),” originally published in 2009 and is translated here by Konstantin Boulich, is an unusual tale of a streetcar that seems to appear when someone needs to get out of a pinch, but it always takes something from them in return. Eerie and haunting, I liked the echoing at the beginning and end of this story.
“The Rainbow Bridge” by Irina Pasko, originally published in 2020 and translated here by Hanna Leviv, had a setting that felt a bit more historical to me, as a servant of a woman and her daughters dealt with changes in the household and his feelings for one of the daughters. This is another story where the end of the story echoes the beginning, though in a nearly identical way that might catch some readers unaware.
Finally, Halyna Lipatova’s “The Last of the Beads,” originally published in 2017 and translated here by R.B. Lemberg, was a satisfying story of revenge by a young woman against the people who had destroyed the lives of her people. Though the main character’s fate is sealed from the first paragraph of the story, the ending still came as a surprise to me!
There are many other stories that I didn’t mention here that also caught my attention, and other readers may resonate better with other stories. I found some of the storytelling techniques very different than what English-speaking readers are accustomed to, and these trended through a good number of the translated stories, suggesting that these techniques may be more common for Ukranian authors. Nonetheless, all the authors, translators, and editors should be commended for taking on such a large and important project! Please also see the Atthis Arts site for more ways in which readers can help the Ukranian people!
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