In this offbeat thriller set in pandemic-era Eastern Europe, a musician is forced to flee from fascist operatives-a story that is as much a classic escape caper as it is a chilling indictment of modern-day authoritarianism.

Winner of the Heinrich Heine Prize

Yuri Andrukhovych is the master stylist of contemporary Ukrainian literature, and his Radio Night is the story of Yosyp Rotsky, a legendary pianist who played at the barricades when revolution rocked his long-oppressed country, and whose life in exile is jeopardized when he is implicated in the death of the dictator of his country. The shady Regime and the insatiable Mob want his head, and Rotsky and his pal, the wise raven Edgar, are on the run, traversing updated mazes from the bad old days while doing their best to maneuver through today's social media-saturated world. Meanwhile, Rotsky's buddy, the mysterious Servus, keeps rolling up at the most (in)opportune times. Radio Night explores a world in upheaval, reverberating between rebirth and apocalypse, loyalty and betrayal, heaven and hell. It is a wild performance, steeped from beginning to end in music. It even comes with a playlist.

Yuri Andrukhovych was born in Stanislav, Ukraine, in 1960. He is the author of five books of poetry, seven novels, and several essay collections. In the mid 198os, he cofounded the performance group Bu-Ba-Bu (Burlesque-Sideshow-Buffoonery), which rebelled against socialist realism, promoting an ethos of poetic and aesthetic freedom. Widely regarded as one of the most important figures in contemporary Ukrainian literature, Andrukhovych is the recipient of the 2014 Hannah Arendt Prize and the 2022 Heinrich Heine Prize. He lives in Ukraine. In addition to Radio Night, New York Review Books publishes Set Change, a collection of Andrukhovych's poetry, translated by Ostap Kin and John Hennessy.

Mark Andryczyk teaches Ukrainian literature at Columbia University, where he administers the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute. He has translated the works of Volodymyr Rafeyenko and Yuri Andrukhovych, and he is the editor, compiler, and a translator of the anthologies Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965 and Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War.