KIEV (dpa) – Every working day, millions of women in Ukraine are devouring books about jealous husbands and gallant paramours as they commute to their jobs.
“It’s my only leisure activity, I probably read a romance novel a week going to and from work,” said Obuhiv accountant Ludmila Zhuravel aged 26. “All my girlfriends are the same. They just want some romance in their lives.”As Ukraine makes its way from former Soviet republic to market economy, Ukrainian women are doing much of the work.Besides filling traditional jobs in education and administration, modern Ukrainian women dominate the country’s health, legal, media, and food service industries.Olha Katran, chairwoman of the Dnipropetrovsk Woman’s Association, estimates that across the nation some 10 million Ukrainian women get up in the morning, make their family breakfast (usually oatmeal), take slow public transportation to work, and then eventually go home to prepare supper and do all the housework.With nearly two out of three marriages in the country failing, many of Ukraine’s working women are single-family providers. Like in most other countries, the salaries Ukrainian which women take home are almost always less than those of their male counterparts.Even worse for a romantically-minded woman here, Ukrainian husbands or boyfriends rarely have cash for flowers or dates.“Practically the only free time a girl has is when she’s riding the bus,” Katran, 43, said. “And with so many men so unromantic, many of our girls like to read a book.”Ukrainian public transportation certainly seems jammed with fans of the genre. In the Dnipropetrovsk underground, Katran’s mother Nadya, a 72-year-old pensioned war veteran, pores over a Sydney Sheldon translation.Rattling home aboard an Odessa tram to the Kotoskogo suburb, Natalia Pariulenko, a factory worker aged 51 prefers Danielle Steele. And in Kiev even a Ukrainian generation Xer speaking good English finds vicarious thrills in pulp.“In their lives, something always is happening,” explained Viktoria Talko, 18, when asked what she liked about romance novel heroines.At the Kiev Book Market, more than a square kilometre of stall vendors in a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, everything is on sale from Tsarist reprints to sexual how-tos and used spare parts manuals. But the customers cluster most – sometimes three deep in sensible coats – where 19th century passion is to be had.“These books sell like crazy, they fly off the shelves,” said bookseller Aleksander Yakunov. “I turn over my inventory about once a week.”Yakunov is fairly typical of today’s Ukrainian small businessman. He and his family members have sunk their savings into something which the public clearly wants.The books on sale in Zakunov’s rented stand are all in Russian, translated and printed in Moscow. They retail at around a half dollar a copy, though popular authors like Steele and Sheldon can set a reader back more than a dollar apiece.The low prices are possible because of a happy combination of dirt-cheap Russian print houses, even cheaper Russian translators, and the fairly porous Russo- Ukrainian border.“We Ukrainians can’t compete with all those cheap foreign books,” complained Ukraine Minister of Culture Bohdan Stupka during a recent television interview. “And our border police can’t keep them out.”Yakunov buys the books from a wholesaler, who imports from Moscow. Besides retailing, stall operators at the book market also sell wholesale to even smaller book sellers, who make romance available from tables set up in the city’s underground railway stations and agricultural markets.You can buy a romance novel in Ukraine on almost any beach, market, or at a typical bus station.On the train, peddlers walk through cars hawking the books. The Hotel Yalta shop in Crimea’s ritziest resort may not offer sun tan oil or the Herald Tribune newspaper but novels like “Endless Love” or “Deadly Passion” are readily available.Most readers admit buying the novels to escape the drudgery of everyday life. Many claim to read the novels on holiday only.All of those asked, whether rich or poor, old or young, seemed slightly embarrassed to admit that they spent money – not so easy to come by in Ukraine – on fantasy in book form. “But”, said Talko, “in a novel there’s always a happy ending.”
