Ukrainian author Sofia Andruchowytsch to read at the Cluster of Excellence
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff reading at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ –Reading and discussion with Ukrainian author Sofia Andruchowytsch in Münster on 20 October – Exploring the political dimension of memory and its erasure in Ukraine’s past and present
Press release from 13 October 2026
The Ukrainian author Sofia Andruchowytsch will give a reading on 20 October at the second Annette von Droste-Hülshoff reading organised by the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’. ‘Andruchowytsch is one of the most important voices in contemporary Ukrainian literature. Her work demonstrates how important, but also how deceptive, memory can be – and how literature, in its own unique way, can illuminate the complex interconnections between history, identity and power’, says Slavic scholar Prof. Dr. Irina Wutsdorff from the Cluster of Excellence, who will introduce the evening’s events and moderate the discussion. Andruchowytsch will read from her epic novel Amadoka (2020), which has been published in German in three volumes: The Story of Romana (2023), The Story of Uljana (2023) and The Story of Sofia (2024). The author will read excerpts in the original, with a member of the acting ensemble at Münster Theatre reciting passages from the German translations. The event will take place in Ukrainian and German, and Dr. Tetyana Dagovych will provide a simultaneous interpretation of the discussion. Afterwards, the Cluster of Excellence will host a reception. Admission is free. The venue is the lecture theatre building of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’, Room JO 1 (Johannisstraße 4, 48143 Münster).
Since 2024, the Annette von Droste-Hülshoff reading organised by the Cluster of Excellence has been inviting international writers who explore the relationship between religion and politics in an aesthetically sophisticated manner. Born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1982, Sofia Andruchowytsch is, as Wutsdorff explains, one of Ukraine’s most renowned contemporary authors. Since the start of Russia’s war of aggression, the multi-award-winning author has also been using her international profile to raise awareness of the situation in her homeland.
‘Andruchowytsch avoids simplistic black-and-white portrayals’
In her novel Felix Austria (2014), Sofia Andruchowytsch had already painted a panorama of the multi-religious and multicultural Galicia around 1900. In her epic novel Amadoka, she explores the themes of loss and annihilation. Named after a lake marked on ancient maps but that does not actually exist, the novel links three traumatic periods in Ukrainian history: the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s and the annihilation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia (‘The Executed Renaissance’), the mass shootings during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s (the ‘Holocaust by Bullets’), and the Russian-Ukrainian war, which began in 2014. ‘Andruchowytsch avoids simplistic black-and-white portrayals. By depicting perpetrators and victims in all their human ambivalence, she challenges moral boundaries as well as the violence that can be inherent in the construction of family histories and national myths’, says Wutsdorff. The novel has also resonated on stage: the production directed by Dušan David Pařízek, a collaboration between Prague’s Divadlo X10 theatre and the ‘Theatre of the World’ festival, premiered in Prague in April 2026 and was shown to German audiences for the first time at the festival in Chemnitz in June.
Andruchowytsch has received numerous awards for her literary work. In 2024, she was awarded the International Hermann Hesse Prize together with her translation team, Alexander Kratochvil and Maria Weissenböck. Amadoka also received the International Literature Prize from Kulturhuset Stadsteatern (Sweden, 2025), the Encounter – Ukrainian-Jewish Literature Prize (Canada/Ukraine, 2023), and the Sholem Aleichem Prize (Ukraine, 2023).
The first Annette von Droste-Hülshoff reading at the Cluster of Excellence was given in 2024 by the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal. ‘The relationship between religion and politics is not merely an object of academic research; it has also been explored in literature since time immemorial. In doing so, literature articulates questions and nuances, dilemmas and conflicts in a way that academic engagement with religion and politics cannot’, explains Prof. Dr. Wolfram Drews, speaker of the Cluster of Excellence, who will open the evening. The reading series is named after Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797–1848), who hailed from the Münsterland region and is regarded as one of the most significant female writers in the German language. ‘Her critical perspective on religion and society ensures that her work still remains relevant in many ways today’, says Drews. (fbu/vvm)