Johannes Lichtman Is Preserving Prewar Ukraine
What does language have to do with relationships? According to author Johannes Lichtman, everything. In the novel Calling Ukraine, protagonist John Turner is unable to talk about his grief over the loss of his father, so loses himself in the intricacies of small talk instead. He accepts a whirlwind job opportunity in Ukraine, where he’s tasked with teaching a team of Ukrainian customer service agents how to “sound American” on the phone with their customers. As the novel progresses, John connects with his colleagues despite the language and cultural barrier, and sometimes because of it, as discussions of their differences bring them closer together.
is inspired by Lichtman’s experience living in Lutsk in 2018 and 2019, which is why the story takes place in an eerily calm Ukraine, after the 2014 Maidan Revolution but before the 2022 Russian invasion. Yet violence simmers around the edges of the story, in one case coming to
