The academic sociologist Ye. Golovakha makes the PEN list

PEN (an abbreviation formed from the English words “poets”, “playwrights”, “essayists” and “novelists”) is the world's most authoritative association of writers. Founded in 1921 on the initiative of the classic English writer John Galsworthy (the first president of the PEN club), PEN today has 146 national centres, including a Ukrainian one since 1998 (its first president was the classic Ukrainian poet Mykola Vinhranovskyi).

For the seventh year running, at the end of December the members of Ukrainian PEN (of whom there are more than 170) traditionally compile a list of the publications that impressed them over the year. Making this prestigious list is an honour both for an author and for the publisher that printed the book. Despite Russian attacks, book publishing has not paused, and 2024 proved genuinely significant for contemporary Ukrainian literature. This year's PEN selection, which includes new prose and poetry, translations, drama, non-fiction, works for children, art publications and the humanities, numbers 201 books.

The non-fiction section (literature that informs, teaches and inspires) features 40 publications this year by well-known Ukrainian and foreign authors — the President of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, Timothy Snyder, Olivia Laing, Benn Steil, Krzysztof Czyżewski and others.

PEN also included in this section the book by the Director of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine, Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor Yevhen Golovakha, “Alternative sociology: a dictionary for unofficial use” (Dukh i Litera), which we had occasion to present earlier.

In congratulating the author on this honourable distinction, we express our confidence that among the researchers of the Institute and, more broadly, among Ukraine's sociologists there are authors with considerable potential to make such a prestigious list or a similar one, which speaks to the serious level of development of Ukrainian sociology, academic sociology included, which works powerfully to high scholarly standards even in the difficult conditions of war.

For more detail see: The best Ukrainian books of 2024 according to PEN Ukraine