The Orphanage

A Novel

By: Serhiy Zhadan

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies

A devastating story of the struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine

If every war needs its master chronicler, Ukraine has Serhiy Zhadan, one of Europe’s most promising novelists. Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher, sets out for the orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives, now in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home.

Written with a raw intensity, this is a deeply personal account of violence that will be remembered as the definitive novel of the war in Ukraine.

©2017 The original Ukrainian edition was first published under the title Інтернат by Meridian Czernowitz, Chernivtsi in 2017. © 2017 by Serhij Zhadan. © 2018 by Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin. Translation © 2021 by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Great, necessary story

Not an easy listen but a necessary one, very well told. Perfectly haunting in the best way. Slava Ukraini.

Life goes on despite everything

What do you do if war has come to your neighborhood? You still have to eat, sleep, and everything else, but when staying or leaving your home is a life and death situation, courage is required. Courage doesn’t only belong to superheroes but to the everyday people.

Good, but not Great

Overall, the biggest hinderence to this novel is the first half. it begins to come into it's own, but there is an absence of sense of place and distance. Pasha's journey is great, but when I finished I struggled to get a clear sense of each character and location he has been. a few stand out, like "Sir" and the "iguana," and a few locations stand out too, but for an almost 11 hour book much feels lost. still, worth a read. Slava Ukraine.

Powerful and insightful!

Beautifully written and narrated story about life during war and occupation. Zhadan’s insights into human psychology are on full display.