Taras Prokhasko The Makings of Many a Story Lilea, Ivano-Frankivsk 2005 The portrayal of a dramatic era in just a few pages requires the minimalist skills of a great writer. Taras Prochasko turns a family epic harbouring a multitude of stories into a series of narrative extracts evoking the inhabitants of a lost world and one which becomes a meditative focus. This world is called Stanislau and is located in the foothills of the Carpathians, a remote corner of the Hapsburg Empire. In the aftermath of two world wars, nothing is as it was before. Only Taras, the grandson, still lives in his Czech grandfather’s house on the main street. He invokes not only the convoluted life stories but also the many things from the past: "Sometimes, the most real I seems to be when I do nothing and say nothing. A collection of chaotic, useless things". Taras Prokhasko, a young associate of Andrzej Stasiuk and Juri Andrukhovich, is his very own kind of poetic surveyor and storyteller. The "Stanislau phenomenon", the unexpected blossoming of literary talent in a provincial town in central Eastern Europe, finds its most laconic expression in Prokhasko.   Непрости - Neprosti The Unsimple People Novel. Lilea, Ivano-Frankivsk 2002, 150 p. When Sebastian arrives in a small town in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains shortly before the First World War he cannot know what he is getting into through his marriage to Anna. Anna is the daughter of Franz, founder of the small town. Before that, the “Unsimple People” ruled the now cleared forests, a people with magic whispering powers. The Unsimple People bestow a daughter upon Franz and his wife Anna, the daughter also being called Anna. In a dispute over who has the right to bring up this wondrous daughter Franz kills his wife. Anna is brought up by her father and the Unsimple People. Shortly after her marriage to Sebastian she meets a tragic death during the war. However, a messenger from the Front brings a baby with him, borne by Anna shortly before her death. In the meantime Franz, too, is dead. Sebastian brings up his daughter – Anna – alone. As she grows into a woman the two become lovers and a fourth Anna is born. Anna 3 dies, and history repeats itself. The little girl grows up and becomes the wife of her father who is also her grandfather. This story of repeated incest is actually a love story. Sebastian keeps finding his Anna in all of the Annas between 1913 and 1951 and gets to know her in all her facets, getting to know her better and better through the ages. Yet it is the Unsimple People who control his life and who give and take the Annas. Sebastian tries to escape them, in vain. He then learns the art of storytelling and sets off travelling, changing the lives of other people by telling them the story of themselves. Prokhasko sets this unique family story against the background of the Huzuls, a Ukrainian ethnic group. Their long oppressed, undercover culture comes to life in the novel as a mythical world cleverly peopled with authentic historical events and figures. In its laconic, abrupt style the novel is almost reminiscent of a botanical catalogue which uses poetic images to highlight the awful beauty which drives life. As the “One Hundred Years of Solitude” of the Carpathian Mountains the book has since achieved cult status in the Ukraine.