Zaporizkyi, Oleksa (pseudonym of Senyk, Illia, 1909-1968)

Novi Baiky [The New Fables]

Kuritiba: Drukarnia Khliborobskoho-Osvitnoho Soiuzu, 1953. Original publisher’s wrappers. Very Good. Item #264

Octavo (22 x 16 cm). 136 pages. Test in Ukrainian. Spine and wrappers lightly worn; unread copy.

The first edition of the collection of tales of the Ukrainian writer Illia Senyk, published in Brazil, brings the writer a certain kind of fame. His fables’ main feature is their form’s literary perfection, which indicates a remarkable literary flair.

In 1935 Senyk was sentenced to three years and sent to a concentration camp in Siberia. When he returned from the camp, he padded various institutions’ thresholds for a long time because he was not hired anywhere. There was no place to live (he often spent the night in the park on a bench), his former friends shied away from him. When the Nazis occupied Zaporizhzhia, Senyk wrote the play “Marko Otava” about the Holodomor of 1932-1933, which he staged at the Dneprodzerzhinsk Theater. After the war, Senyk lived in Brazil and the United States and published many books highly praised by literary critics. He published a lot in periodicals. The well-known Ukrainian writer Yar Slavutych wrote about Illia Senyk, the following: “Be blessed Curitiba (the city in Brazil where Senyk lived), who gave the world the best contemporary Ukrainian fabulist!”

OCLC locates copies in the United States and Canada; not in the trade, as of December 2020.

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