WHO ARE YOU?

Semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about a young boy who grows up in Ukraine in the 1990s and the relationship he develops with his grandmother's boyfriend Felix, a veteran of the Soviet Army who served several years in Afghanistan and suffers from PTSD.

WHO ARE YOU? depicts the first decade of Ukraine's independence and its people's struggle to find their footing in a fledgling economy. It is also the story of the idiosyncratic relationship between a young boy, Timofey, and a grown man, Felix. While Timofey's life is just beginning, Felix's feels like it teeters on the edge, between alcoholism and PTSD, both lingering souvenirs after years of service in the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Young Timofey is confronted by Felix, his enemy and friend, torturer and mentor. He forces Timofey to find out: 'Who am I?' The answer to that question is overshadowed by the repulsive effects and experience of someone else's war, which will inadvertently become the moral and physical preparation for the war he himself will eventually have to fight in 2014. Readers will find a depiction of the childhood and adolescent initiations through which we ourselves have had to make our way as we passed into an adulthood that was not at all what we had expected. ARTEM CHEKH (Cherkasy, Ukraine, 1985) is the author of over ten works of fiction and non-fiction. His 2017 memoir "Absolute Zero", a diary of his time in the army on the Eastern front of Ukraine was translated into English and published in 2020 (Glagoslav Publications). He received the BBC Ukraine Book of the Year Award in 2021, is forthcoming in English translation with Seven Stories Press in the US and the UK. In 2017, he received the Joseph Conrad-Korzienowski Literary Prize, awarded by the Polish Institute of Ukraine. Who Are You? was adapted for the screen by Iryna Tsilyk. The film is called "Rock. Paper. Grenade" and was released in 2022. Chekh is completing a new novel while serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.