Praise and Poems

An introspective novella concerning nostalgia, disillusionment and hope, O Venice! presents a journey that bridges time, space and emotions. The number ten births a new Decameron; the coronavirus becomes a new name for the old plague; social attitudes evolve. In a work that moves fluently between fictive and reflective modes, Fynkelshteyn reminds us: ‘Knowledge is not absolute; it does not contain the whole truth […] it contains the part of the truth that we need at the moment.’     Dr Lorenza Gianfrancesco, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of Chichester

In O Venice! Borys Fynkelshteyn creates distinctive, captivating narratives in which it is difficult to draw a demarcation line between what is fictional and real, imagined and authentic. At a time of global conflict and apocalyptic fear, his post-postmodern consciousness roams over literature from the Early Modern period to Romantic and Modernist classics, integrating these literary phenomena in an insightful and original approach to Ontological Being. In O Venice!, myth is reality in its ontological form.    – Dmytro Drozdovskyi, PhD, Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine