The dreams and reality of Ukrainian emigrants in Iren Rozdobudko’s novel “I Know That You Know That I Know”

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive literary study of the specific features of the artistic representation of emigration experience in contemporary Ukrainian prose discourse, based on Iren Rozdobudko’s novel “I Know That You Know That I Know”. The research focuses on the analysis of the dichotomy of “dream and reality,” which functions as a fundamental constructive principle in the development of the plot-compositional structure of the work and determines the evolution of the characters. The article examines the mental transformations of the individual caused by a situation of cultural rupture, the loss of familiar value orientations, and the need to adapt to an unfamiliar sociocultural environment.

Special emphasis is placed on the deconstruction of the characters’ romanticised expectations, as they encounter the pragmatic challenges of everyday life, leading to a profound existential crisis and the deformation of identity. It is revealed that, in Iren Rozdobudko’s artistic conception, emigration is interpreted not merely as geographical relocation, but as a complex psychological phenomenon of “life between worlds,” where the memory of the past comes into conflict with the challenges of the present. The study analyses the author’s techniques of psychologisation, in particular the use of interior monologues, a confessional narrative manner, and symbolic images, which make it possible to convey a state of disorientation, nostalgia, and alienation.

Through the prism of character-based analysis, the article reveals the mechanisms by which the emigrant’s “new identity” is formed — an identity that often proves fragile and internally contradictory. It is demonstrated that the artistic modelling of emigration experience in the novel is devoid of typification; instead, the author focuses on the individual trajectories of personal self-awareness. The article broadens the understanding of how migration-related issues function in contemporary Ukrainian literature, emphasising the role of the literary text as a space for reflection on the traumatic experiences of the present and for the search for new meanings of existence in a globalised world.