Askold Melnyczuk’s novel Ambassador of the Dead (2001) narrates the process through
which a second-generation, assimilated American learns to comprehend the Ukrainian
historical experience of his family and their generation. This article argues that the
novel is centrally concerned with Nick’s learning process: as he begins to better
understand his parents’ generation, he transforms his own identity. As a child, Nick is
unable to see Ada — his friend’s mother, who is haunted by traumatic experiences — as
anything other than an unchanging, incomprehensible enigma: "Old World Syndrome".
Eventually, Nick comes to follow the example of Anton, a displaced Ukrainian who
narrates a story-within-the-novel that returns Ada’s experiences to their historical and
cultural contexts, while using magical realism to place her Ukrainian experience on
a historical scale. Through Anton’s example, Nick learns how to see both Ada and his
parents as complex historical actors in world history. Understanding the past then
enables him to see himself as Ukrainian and claim an identity that is both Ukrainian
and American.