A Biography of a Chance Miracle

  • A vicious comedy set in San Francisco, Ukraine
  • Rights with Kiwi except Ukrainian

translated by Anna Kauk

Tanja Maljartschuk tells the tragicomic story of Lena, a girl born in San Francisco, Ukraine, who longs for miracles and tries to help her fellow human beings find happiness.

Lena always knew she’d be something really great someday. But, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, her home country is on a more-than-bumpy road to democracy: corruption and dreariness prevail in this “ungodly interim period.” But Lena fights back – she fights for good – for her friends, stray dogs, and kindness – with wit and stubbornness, hoping for a miracle. Because luck is on the side of the intrepid.


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Latvia: Janis Roze / English: Cadmus Press / Serbia: Heliks / Slovenia: Cankarjeva 

  • Publisher: KiWi-Taschenbuch
  • Translated by Anna Kauk
  • Release: 07.07.2022
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-00423-6
  • 288 Pages
  • Author: Tanja Maljartschuk
A Biography of a Chance Miracle
Tanja Maljartschuk A Biography of a Chance Miracle
George Eberle
© George Eberle
Tanja Maljartschuk

Tanja Maljartschuk was born in the Ukraine in 1983. She studied Ukrainian philology and worked as a TV journalist for a couple of years. She has lived in Vienna/Austria since 2011 and received several awards and stipends. Her first book was published in 2004, for the novel  Zabuttya (“The Blue Whale of Memory”), she received the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award 2016. She received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2018 for her short story Frösche im Meer (“Frogs in the Sea”). In 2023 she was awarded the Theodor Kramer Prize for Writing in Resistance and Exile and in 2024 the Jeanette Schocken Prize.

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