Literature/Research/Discover Ukraine Online

Pavlo Derevianko


Novelist

Based in Ukraine

Photo: courtesy of Pavlo Derevianko

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Pavlo Derevianko reimagines Ukrainian Cossack legend as dark fantasy, and international science fiction circles noticed early: in 2022, the opening volume of his trilogy The Chronicle of the Grey Order won the Chrysalis Award for Best Debut from the European Science Fiction Society, and his short fiction has since been translated into Polish for the magazine Nowa Fantastyka and profiled by the genre trade magazine Locus. The trilogy — Arkan of Wolves (2019), Net of War (2020), and Song of Oaks (2022) — became one of the best-selling and most widely read works of contemporary Ukrainian fantasy, prompting a 2025 re-issue.

Set in an alternate nineteenth-century Ukraine, it follows a brotherhood of shapeshifting warriors called the Grey Order who serve as the state's secret protectors; steampunk technology and reimagined Cossack folklore give it a texture unfamiliar to most Western fantasy readers. His next book, a new collection of short prose, is due out in autumn 2026. 

Languages spoken