Palimpsests — Vasyl Stus

Palimpsests is Vasyl Stus's defining book, written over many years in Soviet labor camps and exile. The manuscript was confiscated by the KGB and returned only after Ukraine gained independence.

The poems of Palimpsests are the voice of a poet entirely deprived of freedom yet maintaining inner independence through the word. The collection contains some of the most powerful examples of 20th-century Ukrainian lyric poetry and became a symbol of unbroken spirit.