The Dreamtime

September 1, 2022

DEBUT First published in 2020 at a video-art exhibition in Kyiv, this debut novel from internationally renowned Ukrainian war correspondent Chernov weaves together four interlocking narratives. A traumatized doctor becomes actively involved in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict at the beginning of the war in 2014, a woman cares for her sick father during the bombing of Slovyansk, a dangerous fugitive flees the authorities, and a forensic scientist works on a murder case while coping with her difficult marriage to a former soldier. Setting his novel in Ukraine's Donbas region, Southern Europe, and Southeast Asia, Chernov uses the Australian Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime to merge creation myths and collective imagination with the reality of war. What results is a documentary masquerading as a novel that, at 600 pages, still boasts crisp writing and engaging dialogue. Scene by scene, Chernov vividly describes battles fought in the streets, the bombing and shelling of apartments, and the dreams of those on the front lines, physically and psychologically. VERDICT Originally written to examine media's role in creating public collective experiences, this timely novel from a Ukrainian author excels at examining the connection between reality and dreams and exploring the effects of war on the human psyche.--Jacqueline Snider

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September 1, 2022
This war-torn and world-weary debut novel by an acclaimed Ukrainian photojournalist offers an unmatched perspective on an ongoing conflict. Chernov has earned international praise for capturing poignant moments amid dire circumstances. Most recently, he chronicled his escape from Mariupol while under Russian siege. Chernov's fiction seeks similar intensity, portraying people in ruined hospitals and makeshift bomb-shelters and on slow-burning death-watches and doomed tactical assaults. He traces four narrative strands about a guilt-ridden doctor taking risks in a Donbas combat zone, a woman tending to her alcoholic father, a forensic scientist in a battered marriage, and a mentally ill philosopher looking for a reason to live. This ambitious structure gives the novel a disorienting quality that underscores themes of trauma and loss. The Dreamtime's most chilling moment may be its depiction of the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014. First published in Kyiv in 2020 in conjunction with a visual art exhibition on media and culture, Chernov's now translated novel will resonate even more today, given the current escalation of Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine.

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September 15, 2023
Chernov's impassioned novel poses existential questions against the backdrop of the Ukrainian war. The book focuses on four characters: There is Eva, who lives with her deranged father (who uses the walls of their flat to plot an immensely complicated and unfinished novel in magic-marker). Next is K, a doctor who volunteers his services without political fear or favor. Maria Alexandrovna is a forensic investigator trying to solve a murder while holding things together with her young son, Tykhon, and her patriotic soldier husband, Andrei. Finally, and known only through his letters, there is the mysterious (and perhaps insane) Fryderyk, who was once Maria's lover and now toys with her, making arch pronouncements such as "insulting someone during their suicide attempt is in poor taste." Throughout there is war, omnipresent and ghastly. This is a massive and complicated book, one in which the reader is sometimes lost. Is it the author who sometimes address the reader directly ("Is this boring you yet")? If not, what character is speaking? On the other hand, if this is indeed the "dreamtime" (the author's term for "the generalized discord of our times), anything goes, chaos becomes not a bug but a feature, and the narrator can be a trickster. Translated by Leonard and Helbing from the Russian version, the writing is forceful and vivid. The characters banter with gallows humor, and the urgency of K's attempts (rendered in impressive medical and technical detail) to save lives that are slipping away hits home with great impact. Gradually, some connections are revealed, such as the fact that K is a psychiatrist who once had Fryderyk as a patient, and through that relationship a glancing connection to Maria. Toward the end of the book, he and Maria have a long, philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, fate, dreams, and the war. "[W]ar is so appalling," says K, "it simply cannot be real." And yet, it is. Unfortunately, a book for our times--vivid enough to grab us and not let go.

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