Vasyl Shklyar

Vasyl Shklyar is one of the most titled contemporary Ukrainian writers. He was born in Cherkassy region; graduated from the Yerevan University (Armenia); worked as an editor, a journalist, was in a number of hot spots (Chechnya, Abkhazia, Karabakh). In 1998, he got to a reanimation having a deathly diagnose and in spite of the doctors’ "help" survived. It took him only one month after that to write his most popular novel "The Key". The novelist is an author of more than ten prose books. The writer became a prizewinner of many literary contests. His favorite prize is "Author whose books are the most stolen from the bookshops". The works by Vasyl Shklyar have been translated into Swedish, Bulgarian, Armenian, Russian and other languages.
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Vasyl Shklyar is the author of "Black Raven," a novel about the frequently overlooked anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian resistance of the 1920s. His novel was selected for the Shevchenko Prize, a top honor in Ukraine. But in March Shklyar declined the award and the accompanying $32,000 prize money to protest what critics describe as the "Ukrainophobic" policies of Education Ministry Dmytro Tabachnyk.
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