Lucky Breaks

Captivating, innovative Ukrainian fiction about displaced women living in the shadow of the war with Russia

'This singular collection brings Ukraine, "the land of residual phenomena," entirely to life' Kirkus Reviews

In Lucky Breaks, we encounter anonymous women from the margins of Ukrainian society, their lives upended by the ongoing conflict with Russia. A woman, bewildered by her broken umbrella, tries to abandon it like a sick relative; a beautiful florist suddenly disappears, her shop converted into a warehouse for propaganda; hiding out from the shelling, neighbours read horoscopes in the local paper that tell them when it's safe for them to go outside.

In stories of linguistic verve and absurdist wit, Yevgenia Belorusets writes of trauma amidst the mundane, telling surreal, unsettling tales of survival in a shattered country.



Yevgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian writer, journalist, artist, and photographer who lives between Kyiv and Berlin. Her photographic work calls attention to the more vulnerable sections of Ukrainian society – queer families, out-of-work coal miners, the Roma, people living in the war zone in the East – and was shown in the Ukrainian pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. She is a member of the Hudrada curatorial collective and cofounder of Prostory, a journal for literature, art, and politics. She was awarded the 2020 HKW International Literature Award in Germany for Lucky Breaks, her first work of fiction.