Carlo Ossola
Maria. Cronaca di una vita (Mary. The story of a life)
Samchuk U., Maria. Cronaca di una vita. Ossola C. (ed.), trans. by M. Semegen, Florence, Edizioni Clichy, coll. "Père Lachaise - Classici", 2022, 228 p.
Published in 1934 and written in Ukrainian, this novel by Ulas Samchuk (born in 1905 in Dermań, a village in the Rivne region, and died in 1987 in Toronto) tells the story of a village and a young girl, from the abolition of peasant serfdom in Russia in 1861, to the extermination by starvation(Holodomor) programmed by Stalin in 1932-1933 (more than four million dead in Ukraine). This story is not only a poignant testimony to a genocide, but also an essential document of Ukrainian folklore, culture, language and tradition, providing the background to a collective memory that is now resurfacing.
Ulas Samchuk is one of the great Ukrainian authors of the 20thcentury : his biography is the story of a continuous exile, as he testifies in his autobiographical notes Midi cinq. Notes in bulk: "I have seen czars, kings, emperors, presidents, dictators: Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, the hunger of 1932-33, concentration camps... and eternal exile".
