Sofiia Andrukhovych’s Felix Austria: the postcolonial neo-Gothic and Ukraine’s search for itself

ABSTRACT

Sofiia Andrukhovych’s 2014 novel Felix Austria (Feliks Avstriia) became Ukraine’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work of literature published in the immediate aftermath of the Euromaidan revolution of 2013–14. It combined an ambitious historical reconstruction of daily life in the year 1900 in a mid-size city in the Habsburg-ruled part of Ukraine and an engaging plot skilfully employing multiple devices associated with the Gothic tradition, especially in its latter-day and postmodernist reinterpretations. The novel’s success is especially telling in the context of the rising interest in the Gothic in Ukrainian culture. Told by an unreliable narrator, the novel prompts readers to interrogate their assumptions. In the context of Ukraine, it is particularly subversive in its engagement with the nostalgic myth of the Habsburg Empire as a multi-ethnic utopia of tolerance, and by implication it challenges all imperial myths. The novel’s emphasis on the quest for (self-)discovery strongly resonated with readers in the context of a socio-political crisis, which highlighted the relevance of the distinct postcolonial overtones in its message.