The Sarabande of Sara’s Band

Larysa Denysenko THE SARABANDE  OF SARA’S BAND   Glagoslav Publications THE SARABANDE OF SARA’S BAND By Larysa Denysenko The translation was made possible thanks to the financial assistance of Arseniy Yatseniuk “Open Ukraine” Foundation First published in Ukrainian as “Сарабанда банди Сари” in 2008 by Nora Druk Translated by Michael M. Naydan and Svitlana Bednazh © 2008, Nora Druk © 2013, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom Glagoslav Publications Ltd 88-90 Hatton Garden EC1N 8PN London  United Kingdom ISBN: 978-1-909156-71-5 (Epub) ISBN: 978-94-91425-58-5 (Epub, Nederland) This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.   A note on Larysa Denysenko Of Lithuanian and Greek extraction, Larysa Denysenko was born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1973. Denysenko wears a number of hats among her professions, including those of lawyer, novelist, literary and art critic, telejournalist, screenwriter, model and writer for glossy women’s magazines, and columnist. Originally Russian speaking, she mastered the Ukrainian language at the age of 23 when she began to work in the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice. She holds a degree in law from the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University and has studied at The Central European University in Prague and in the Ministry of Justice in The Netherlands. She currently lives in Kyiv and practices law, dealing largely with issues of corruption, the death penalty, and children’s rights. She also was one of the authors and hosts of the culturological television program Document+ on the Studio 1+1 channel and well as on the 1+1 International channel from 2006-2010. Her novels include Toys Made of Flesh and Blood (2003), The Coffee Taste of Cinnamon (2005), A Corporation of Idiots (2005), Dances in Masks (2006), 24:33:42 (2007), Mistaken Imitations or Life according to the Timetable of Murderers (2007), and The Sarabande of Sara’s Band (2008). She also has published three children’s books and five other collections on cultural and literary topics. Her first novel won the 2002 Coronation of the Word Grand Prize. Denysenko’s Sarabande of Sara’s Band is largely a dialogic novel with a polyphony of voices that conveys most of the action through the rapidfire interactions of the characters in one-on-one situations or in small groups of family, extended family, and friends. Most of that interaction revolves around the novel’s male protagonist Pavlo Dudnyk, from whose point of view (but from varying perspectives) the entire story unfolds. After a divorce, Pavlo moves in with his schoolhood friend Sara Polonska, who used to mock him in school with the nickname “Underbutt.” What he doesn’t realize at first when he moves in with her is that he has also “married” into her extended family, Sara’s band of Polonskys, with their myriad quirks and peculiar behavior. Pavlo, too, has his own band of mildly dysfunctional friends with their own issues. The novel presents a number of small slices of Pavlo’s life, lively repartee, and, sometimes, silly situations, such as when Pavlo and his best friend’s wife Eva discuss their first s****l encounters as teenagers. The novel is also filled with a great amount of word play and humor, which make it a challenge to translate. It gives the reader a good deal of insight into aspects of the everyday lives, loves and mores of the current generation of urban intellectual Ukrainians. We have decided to maintain Denysenko’s punctuation for the most part in the translation. She tends to use periods instead of commas after quoted speech, and her choice to do that at times creates a rapid pace in the text. I am most grateful to my co-translator Svitlana Bednazh for her expert emendations and thoroughness in editing my drafts of the translation. It is significantly better as a result of her efforts. Many thanks also to translation studies specialist Alla Perminova for assisting me in resolving many sticky wickets in the translation, particularly in the areas of current slang and surzhyk expressions, the latter of which is a street idiom and a mishmash of Ukrainian and Russian. I, of course, am responsible for any errors. – Michael M. Naydan Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies The Pennsyvlania State University