Ukraine book recommendations: Top 5 Ukrainian writers who could’ve won Nobel Prize

The world community recently celebrated the announcement of this year's Nobel Prize winners. South Korean author Han Kang made history in 2024 as the first from her country to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Ukraine — a country with a rich literary tradition and countless talented authors — has yet to celebrate one of its writers receiving this prestigious prize. Over decades, Ukrainian authors have been potential contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but many things, like ultimate death and Soviet regime prosecution, stood in their way of being recognized.

Rubryka shares the list of five famous Ukrainian writers considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1. Ivan Bahrianyi (1906–1963)

The master of the Ukrainian adventure novel, Ivan Bahrianyi, is considered one of the most prolific writers and political figures from Ukraine. He wasn't afraid to expose the cruel crimes of the Soviet regime in his work, where he talked about how the USSR, the re-packaged Russian empire, exploited the Ukrainian people, how deceitful and atrocious its punitive system was, and more.

Bahrianyi knew the system firsthand. During Stalin's repressions, he was arrested and imprisoned for "nationalist counter-revolutionary activity," then exiled to the Far East and, after an escape attempt, sent to a labor camp. His experience of arrest, torture, and exile became the basis for his novels The Garden of Gethsemane (1948) and The Hunters and the Hunted (1944), which we recommend reading.

When the writer had a chance, in 1945, he fled the Bolsheviks to Germany, where he continued to advocate for Ukrainian independence. In 1963, Ukrainian activists in Chicago campaigned to nominate Ivan Bahrianyi for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He had a strong chance of winning for his work exposing the Soviet GULAG system, which he wrote about nearly twenty years before Nobel-awarded Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

Learn more about one of the most famous Ukrainian writers, Ivan Bahrianyi, here.

2. Ivan Franko (1856–1916)

The titan of Ukrainian literature, Ivan Franko, is one of the most famous Ukrainian poets whose influence on new generations of Ukrainians is comparable to that of Taras Shevchenko, the father of the modern Ukrainian language. He was a man of extraordinary memory who knew 14 languages and wrote a few thousand literary works over his 40-year career as a poet, playwright, writer, and translator.

Beyond his creative work, Franko was also a political activist and journalist. In 1890, when Ukraine was split between two empires, Russia and Austria-Hungary, he founded Ukraine's first political party and established about ten publications. For his fight for social justice, the poet was imprisoned by Austrian authorities four times. 

In 1915, Yosyp Yakovych, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest in Vienna, nominated Franko for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Supported by a professor in Sweden, Franko's candidacy stood out and was fourth on the list. Sadly, he passed away in May 1916 before the prize could have been awarded. We recommend reading some of his poems and stories in this collection here.

3. Vasyl Stus (1938–1985)

Vasyl Stus might be one of the most iconic figures in Ukraine's history and literature, who embodied the Ukrainian people's brave struggle for independence and resistance against Russia. Besides being a gifted poet and translator, he was also a human rights activist who stood against Soviet oppression and became one of the most notable figures of the Ukrainian dissident movement.

The international community tends to believe that the repressions and arrests of now-famous Ukrainian writers and other intellectuals ended with Stalin, but it's not true. They continued into the 1960s, and Vasyl Stus spoke against them, which ended in his arrest and imprisonment for "anti-Soviet propaganda" in 1972. He spent years in Soviet prisons, publishers rejected his work, and his poetry was banned. 

After release, Stus continued to write and speak out against the regime, which led to a second arrest and sentence of ten years of hard labor. In a prison camp, he wrote more poetry, most of which was destroyed by Soviet jailers. In 1985, the Ukrainian diaspora in Toronto attempted to nominate Stus for the Nobel Prize in Literature but could not complete the nomination in time. Vasyl Stus tragically died in a Soviet labor camp after a dry hunger strike the same year. His legacy lives in his poetry, some of which you can read here.

4. Lina Kostenko (1930)

Like Stus, Lina Kostenko is another masterful Ukrainian poet who used her voice to stand up for what was right. A daughter of the "enemy of the state," she was part of Ukraine's dissident movement that fought to revive national consciousness in the 1960s. Like other famous Ukrainian writers and dissidents, she openly criticized the Soviet regime, participated in protests against the arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, and publicly defended fellow dissidents during public trials. 

Because of her active position, Kostenko was blocklisted from the official literary scene and couldn't publish her work for 16 years. Despite this, she continued to write, creating a body of work known for the themes of patriotism, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit. Her historical novel in verse, Marusia Churai (1979), is considered a masterpiece of Ukrainian literature. Some of her most famous poems include Wings (1958), A Terrible Kaleidoscope (1986), and Two Lyrics of Love and Memory (1989).

In 1967, Lina Kostenko, along with Ukrainian poets Pavlo Tychyna and Ivan Drach, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Omeljan Pritsak, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute founder, submitted their candidacies, but the Nobel Committee viewed the proposal as politically motivated because their poetry was in Ukrainian, and Ukraine was not independent. In 2021, Ukraine's parliament tried to submit Kostenko for the Nobel Prize again, but she wasn't nominated.

5. Ivan Drach (1936–2018)

Kostenko's fellow Nobel nominee, Ivan Drach, was also among Ukrainian poets involved in political life, namely the 1960s dissident movement. In his first poems, he outspokenly criticized the Soviet regime and made friends with famous Ukrainian writers and political activists from the dissident group. This friendship led to conflicts with Soviet authorities. Fearing arrest and the same fate as some Ukrainian intellectuals, Drach distanced himself from the movement.

Ivan Drach's literary career took off after his debut poem, Knife in the Sun (1961), about the negative impact of scientific discoveries on the planet's life. His famous collection Sunflower (1962), revolving around the theme of a poet's birth and including poems like Ballad of the Sunflower, became iconic for its experimental poetic style. His work, which you can discover for yourself in this English publication, was also known outside of the USSR.

Besides being nominated in 1967, alongside Lina Kostenko and Pavlo Tychyna, Ivan Drach was a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature for the second time. After the Nobel Committee made the information about his first nomination public in 2018, Ukraine's Taras Shevchenko National University and literary scholar Mykhailo Naienko renewed the efforts to nominate Drach. Tragically, Ivan Drach passed away the same year before his candidacy could be fully considered.