Modern Ukrainian authors: who is the most popular in Ukraine?

For Ukrainians, Lina Kostenko is the best-known author from among contemporary Ukrainian writers. This is one of the findings of a study carried out across the whole of Ukraine and titled “Ukrainian Reading Publishing Data 2018”. The study was published by the Chytomo cultural and publishing project in conjunction with the GUTENBERGZ digital publishing house and in co-operation with the Razumkov Centre sociological service.

When answering the open-ended question “Which contemporary Ukrainian writers do you know of?” 10% of the respondents named Lina Kostenko. Serhii Zhadan ranked second, with 7%; Yuriy Andrukhovych and Oksana Zabuzhko came third and fourth (with a slight difference in the number of mentions: 4.7% and 4.3%, respectively), and Vasil’ Shkliar was fifth, named by 3.9% of the respondents. None of Luko Dashvar, Iren Rozdobudko or Irena Karpa were among the top five; it’s worth noting that in a 2014 study of 2014, Ms Karpa was among the top five.

Lina Kostenko has been at the top of the ratings of Ukrainian writers for many years.

However, knowing about does not equate to reading: only about half of the respondents had actually read the books of the authors which they named. 5.8% of the respondents had read Lina Kostenko’s books and 3.9% Serhii Zhadan’s books. Oksana Zabuzhko outperformed Yurii Andrukhovych in terms of readers (2.6% versus 2.4%), respectively, and Vasil’ Shkliar (with 2.2%) was ousted from the top five by Luko Dashvar: her works had been read by 2.3% of the respondents.

In total, 145 names of contemporary Ukrainian writers were given during the survey. 14% of the respondents could not name even a single Ukrainian writer, and 13.8% responded “I find it difficult to answer” to this question. 9.9% did not respond at all.

16% of Ukrainians have not read a single book by a Ukrainian author of our times.

Vasyl Stus, Oles Buzyna, Vsevolod Nestayko, Yurii Pokalchuk, Vasyl Barka, Anatolii Dimarov, Natalia Zabila, Pavel Zagrebelnyi and others were named among contemporary Ukrainian writers.

1.9% of Ukrainians named literary classics of Ukraine.

The full text of the study is available here.

The study was conducted with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

The study was conducted by the Razumkov Centre sociological service between 26 October and 1 November 2018 in all regions of Ukraine except the Crimea peninsula and the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 2,013 respondents aged 15–59 years old were interviewed. The theoretical sampling error is 2.3%.