SOURCE: "Shevchenko's Nine Russian 'Novels'," in The Ukrainian Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, Spring, 1981, pp. 25-41.

In the following essay, LaPica analyzes and evaluates the novels that Shevchenko wrote in Russian, summarizing their plots and explaining their significance in his oeuvre.

I. Introduction

Shevchenko's nine Russian "novels" are a literary curiosity of interest to everyone who loves his poetry. The nine works are really long short stories or novelettes rather than novels, and were written during his 10 years in exile in the Caspian Sea region. They were never published during his lifetime. Only one, The Artist, has been translated into English. All have been translated from the Russian, which Shevchenko wrote, into Ukrainian. The time has come when all should now be translated into English—directly from Shevchenko's Russian.

(This article is based on the reading of the Ukrainian translations of all nine novels and both the Ukrainian and...