The nomination 'Reader of the Year' was awarded to a schoolgirl with a review of the book 'City is me'.
"I am in the City" made it to the Longlist of the BBC Book of the Year 2023. Every year, as part of the BBC Book of the Year literary award, BBC Ukraine conducts the "Reader of the Year" competition for reader reviews.
In 2023, two schoolgirls emerged victorious in the competition, and one of them, Lidia Latsyk from Ternopil, won by writing a review of Irina Ozymok's book "City is me."
Lidia Latsyk
Irina Ozymok and the Knigolav publishing house offered us an interactive book 'City is me. And not only me' — vibrant, interesting, and motivating. From the first page, the concise and dynamic presentation of information impresses, subtly nudging towards conclusions. It's unusual to read a narrative where the main characters are such an abstract concept as 'the city.'"
"One could say the main character is an inanimate object, but when you flip through the last page, you understand that the City is a living being: it eats, drinks water, grows and develops, requires warmth and care, has its own character, and its own life story."
The structure of the book reinforces the idea that we should perceive the City as a complex organism, considering the daily processes that occur within it as paths to satisfying the basic needs of a not-so-ordinary being.
Communications, prospects, streets, pedestrian and bicycle lanes, through which endless streams of cars and pedestrians move, are nothing else but arteries, veins, and capillaries of a living organism that ensure the connection and synchronization of various processes to achieve societal well-being.
"Having satisfied life's essential needs (supply of electricity and natural gas, water supply and drainage, heat production), the City poses complex questions before us: 'Who am I?' 'Why do I exist?' 'Do I have a future?' 'What should it be like?'
The city is like a large bee family. Each bee in the hive cares for its well-being. There is no place for idlers and the indifferent in the hive; everyone must contribute to the common cause.
Read the full version of the review: https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/articles/cye6g7g58y4o