Get ready for Potter mania
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Get ready for Potter mania

June 26, 2007 at 22:44 | Alexandra Matoshko
The newest Harry Potter installment to reach Ukraine in a month

final book about the adventures of the world’s most popular wizard-boy, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will hit local book stores in October, according to an announcement made by the director of A-Ba-Ba-Ga-La-Ma-Ga publishing house, Ivan Malkovych, on Friday, June 22. The Ukrainian version of the book will be created by the old team – translator Viktor Morozov and illustrator Vladislav Yerko, responsible for all the previous Ukrainian translations of the Harry Potter books.

The original English version is scheduled to be released globally in English-speaking countries shortly after midnight (British Summer Time) on July 21. The world’s biggest e-booksellers such as Amazon and Barns & Nobles reported that the book has topped the best sellers list since February, when the release date was first announced.

As for the Ukrainian translation of the Harry Potter book, it gained popularity among local readers after the fifth installment, “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix,” came out. Previously the books were read in Russian by local Potter fans, since there weren’t any available in Ukrainan. A-Ba-Ba-Ga-La-Ma-Ga started releasing Harry Potter in Ukrainian after several installments in Russian had already been out and therefore the Ukrainian translation wasn’t very popular. But with the release of the fifth book in Ukrainian – several months before the Russian version – the Ukrainian publishing house was finally able to reach local audiences. The Ukrainian edition became a huge bestseller and readers also discovered that the translation was much better than the Russian one.

Still, those willing to read the newest book in Ukrainian will have to wait until autumn, while the original English edition is supposed to reach local book stores by the end of July. In the meantime Potter fans have something else to look forward to – the movie “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” that is to be released in Ukraine on July 19 – just a few days before the official release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”