Vera Martynov's book "41515 Words" is structured as autofiction: her diary entries are interrupted by a theatrical play, then return to reflections on the present. Vera Martynov treats diary texts as found objects—pre-existing fragments that she transforms into artistic material, revealing memory and personal experience.
In her intimate writings, Martynov explores how her personal story resonates with the chaos of war and intertwines with collective experience. Having left Russia ten days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, she bids farewell to her former world and searches for inner support.
She grew up in southern Ukraine, but her adult life and artistic career took shape in Moscow. In this search, she finds her identity increasingly being reduced to her national origin—Ukrainian or Russian.
The texts, written in Russian, include fragments in Ukrainian, English, and French and are published alongside a German translation. The publication combines the texts, ink drawings, and photographs by the author.
The novel will be presented at the meeting. «Butter Me Up» Liliya Zhernov, which will be published by the publishing house in the fall.
This is a confessional novel about a love that was never lived. The narrator remains nameless, and yet her voice resonates with such intimacy that it feels familiar. She has survived motherhood, war, and emigration—and now, with pain and tenderness, she looks back on her one, devastating, tenderly masochistic love for another woman.
This story maps loss across European cities, train stations, and dreams. However, it unfolds not through external events, but through the heroine's internal dilemma: how to leave behind what has become the entire density of the present?
The novel is stitched together like a quilt—from monologues, poems, letters, dreams, cultural allusions, and metaphysical inclusions. Words become the last place where belonging—at least to memory—is still possible. The meeting is moderated by the publishing house's founder. zeitkind Gabriela Merz.