The chances of achieving literary success in a foreign country for immigrant authors writing in their non-native language are slim, yet Maryana Gaponenko, 33, a native of Odesa in southern Ukraine, is getting recognition as a German novelist.
In 2013, she was awarded the Adelbert von Chamisso literary prize for her German-language novel “Who is Martha?” that tells a story of 96-year-old Ukrainian ornithologist Luka Levadsky, who spends the last weeks of his life in Vienna’s Grande Hotel recalling his youth.
The 15,000-euro prize was established in 1985 by Robert Bosch Foundation for non-German born authors who contribute to German literature.
“Every creative person strives for recognition and receiving this award is very important for me as an author,” Gaponenko says. She spent last year travelling through Europe and the U.S. on a book tour.
A graduate of Odesa University’s philology department, the female novelist left Ukraine in the early 2000s to live in Poland and then Ireland, before returning to Poland once more. Now she resides in Germany’s Mainz, though also considers Vienna as her second home.
She first came to Germany in 2000. “I was impressed by friendly faces of passers-by,” Gaponenko says. She noted Germans’ interest in recycling and is still amazed with their concern about ecological issues.
Gaponenko has devoted more than 15 years to writing. “I write only in German. I have a feeling that I can think more clearly, laconically and distinctively in German,” she explains.
Her path to success was not an easy one. Collection of poems by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, translated into German, became her first German textbook.
“This book ignited my passion,” Gaponenko recalls. “German came to me with bloody sweat”.
Her private German tutor stimulated her abilities. As a 13-year-old teenager, she had to read a complex philosophical or scientific text, write out unfamiliar words and compose a story using the new words. “I have written hundreds of such stories,” Gaponenko says. “This method awakened my joy to write stories.”
Her stories trigger emotional responses among readers Once when she was publicly reading excerpts from the novel “Who is Martha?” an elderly woman approached her. “She said my book brought her back to life, her voice was trembling,” Gaponenko describes.
Her writings have been published in literary journals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Best of all, perhaps, her work also helped her find a husband. “My poems that he read in a German literary journal impressed him so much that he started looking for my contacts through the publisher. And he found me,” the writer says.
War in the Donbas, where camouflaged Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian army, depresses Gaponenko. “At the moment I dream of only one thing – for the war in Ukraine to be over,” she adds.
These days the writer is working on her third novel.
A philosopher and his disciple will be the protagonists of her planned book. It takes a half-year for Gaponenko to prepare for writing a long text. “For a couple of months I read scientific literature related to the plot, as I don’t want to write about something I don’t know much about,” she says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected].
