The Dreamtime : : A Novel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (544 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; First Wall --; Second Wall --; Third Wall
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781644699904; 9783110767414; 9783110767001; 9783110993899; 9783110994810; 9783110993752; 9783110993738
• DOI: 10.1515/9781644699904?locatt=mode:legacy
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph

The Dreamtime is a fusion of documentary and psychological thriller inspired by true events conceived and written over an eight-year period. Drawing on the Indigenous Australian concept of dreamtime, the novel explores a society’s collective experience of war and conflict and is based on real events that the author witnessed during the war in eastern Ukraine and the migration crises in southern Europe over recent years. The novel unfolds through a series of intertwining narratives focusing on four characters: a guilt-ridden doctor trying to exorcise his demons by exposing himself to war; a young woman tending to her ailing father as the bombs fall around them; a mysterious sociopath playing a cat-and-mouse game; a troubled forensic evidence expert married to a discharged soldier harboring fantasies of returning to the front. As these threads unfurl, through harrowing scenes of conflict and trauma, personal and collective, they gradually begin to intertwine and an enigmatic pattern emerges. The plots span in space from Ukraine’s war-torn Donbass region to southern Europe and southeast Asia, tied together by themes of existential conflict and the blurred line between reality and dreams. The novel was launched in Kyiv in 2020 as the focal point for a video-art exhibition on the media’s role in creating public collective experiences. It was well-received by critics and praised for its realism in depicting war, for its creative literary depiction of how dreams reflect the psyche and for its masterly prose. It was published both in Ukrainian and Russian and nominated by the publisher for the Ukrainian Book Institute’s national library acquisitions programme and BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year Awards.