A couple in their thirties, a super cute dog, a new house with a garden: the story that Oleksandr Mykhed wants to tell begins like those posters that the inhabitants of kyiv read before the war on their billboards: “Come live in Boutcha”, “The countryside 20 minutes from kyiv”… This small town was then a booming residential suburb and a promise of family happiness: 25 kilometers from the heart of the capital, there was a real “town house” for the price of a studio.
Oleksandr Mykhed, not yet 30 at the time but already a promising writer, had bought one “two stories” in 2018, in Hostomel, on the edge of Boutcha, he explains in the café-restaurant in the center of kyiv, where The world the meeting. Oleksandr Mykhed belongs to this young Ukrainian intellectual elite whose lives the war had a violent impact on. He joined the armed forces of his country, and his meticulous account of the past two years, in the heart of the war and as close as possible to the trauma of bodies and minds, resonates like an incredible fable – a Ukrainian fable.
In Hostomel, his house was located in a newly built district where the streets, on the edge of a pine forest, bear cheerful names, without heroes or cumbersome past: picturesque alley, sunny lane… “We lived happily with my wife, Olena, and our dog, Lissa [“renard” en ukrainien] », a pretty little red and white animal with a pointy snout whose photo he shows on his phone. Saturday night was shrimp curry with white wine and friends; and in summer, a nap in the sun, on the grass of the garden. On Sunday morning, the young couple ordered eggs Benedict at Monocle de Boutcha, a cozy tea room, before stopping at Oleksiy, at the Zvirutti pet boutique. Lissa frolicked behind her masters’ bikes to the apartment where Oleksandr’s parents had ended up moving in turn, in the spring of 2021, to be closer to their son. A balcony overlooking the forest, on the seventh floor of a residential building in Boutcha. A clear view, the perfect place to admire the sunsets over the municipal park and, in the distance, the Hostomel airport.
Oleksandr’s father, Professor Pavlo Volodymyrovych Mykhed, Doctor of Philology, heads the department of Slavic literature at the Taras-Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. A great Gogol specialist, who got into the habit of sitting on the balcony of his new home to read and work. His wife, Tetyana, professor at kyiv National University, teaches contemporary and mid-19th century American literature.e century. Two academics, two intellectual “big names”, two eternal enthusiasts, although they are over 70 years old.
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