Canadian–American Slavic Studies 44 (2010) 82–101 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI 10.1163/221023910X512813 brill.nl/css 1) See, for example, Marko Pavlyshyn, “Te Rhetoric of Geography in Ukrainian Literature, 1991-2005,” in Ukraine, the EU and Russia: History, Culture and International Relations, ed. Stephen Velychenko (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 89-107. Geography Matters: Regionalism and Identities in Contemporary Ukrainian Prose Maria G. Rewakowicz University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Abstract Tis paper examines the representations of four Ukrainian cities (Kyiv, Rivne, Chernivtsi, and Lviv) in a few selected fictional narratives by four contemporary Ukrainian authors. Each of these cities represents not just concrete urban settings, but also provides a certain set of beliefs, myths, and historical accounts. Te sense of belonging to the local territory is underscored, yet the sense of belonging to the nation and the world is not dismissed. Kurkov, Irvanets, Kozhelianko, and Vynnychuk celebrate the city as a generator and site of identity, simultaneously regional and national. Keywords Ukrainian post-Soviet literature, literature of place, regionalism, urban fiction, Ukrainian identity Since independence, the geography of belonging has played a crucial role in Ukrainian literature. 1 In fact, a decentralization of the literary process on the one hand, and a tendency by a number of writers to heighten regional differ- ences in their texts (along with attendant cultural identities), on the other, emerge as some of the chief characteristics of the post-Soviet period. One could say that this literary trend toward regionalism and decentralization echoes similar discourses in the political and economic spheres of post- independence nation-building activities. Yet, behind this seeming espousal of geographic and cultural difference in works of imaginative writing, there is, it