"Melnyczuk is a writer of great power, lyricism, and assurance..." - Starred Review, BOOKLIST
Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature
Forthcoming
EXCERPT
I'm lucky to be alive. Standing in the principal's office in Cambridge last week, listening to the charges against me, I could feel Dad's blood pressure blow through the roof. This was not a good moment to be tipping the family boat. Mainly because it had already capsized. The ever-clueless Dr. Post droned on about my "crimes against humanity." I wanted to ask if...
The House of Widows
Graywolf Press, 2008
"Despite its modest page count, this is a big novel. It’s about identity—personal, political, and tribal. It’s about fathers and sons and mothers and sons. It’s about love, war, duty, honor, betrayal, history, and politics—and the perils of each. Melnyczuk is a writer of great power, lyricism, and assurance, and he has created a large cast of compellingly complex characters, as well as vivid portraits of London, Vienna, and Ukraine. Hard to put down and harder to forget." --Thomas Gaughan. Starred Review, BOOKLIST
Ambassador of the Dead
Counterpoint Press, 2001; PFP 2011.
A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, Ambassador of the Dead introduces Ada Kruk, a mother like no other, at once Mary and Medea, Sarah and Medusa. A study of ambitions gone awry and appetites too easily gratified, this novel is also an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the price of love.