Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Ukranian by Daisy Gibbons – published April 2026

Worn down by work and the demands of city life, the narrator and his wife Zoïa head for the tranquility of the Carpathian mountains. On their way up to a basic cabin in their old and barely functioning car, the narrator notes the erosion of rocks and ponders on the equivalent term in Ukranian. He decides on ‘weathering.’

These mountains, in the southwest of Ukraine, I travelled through on a bikepacking tour of the Carpathians in the summer of 2018, passing through the small town of Yasinia. The first quarter of the book is set here, and Chapeye’s writing excels in the descriptions of this magnificent landscape.

At the cabin, they have no contact with the outside world, which suits them fine, though after a couple of weeks they need supplies and drive to the local village. All they find are empty houses and shops, and it seems an unseen force that is beginning to exert the same effect on them. With some reluctance, they return to the city.

As soon as we had come out of the rain, the same physical sensation came over her too. Empty-headedness, a weakened heart, insides coldly putrefying. Flexible limbs, boneless rubber. Muscles atrophying, the weakening skeleton, the softening mind – all painlessly, which is the most frightening part of it: dissolving imperceptibly into your surroundings, slowly filing down like the moon, and then becoming translucent, and you weather away into thin air.

At first this seems like the sort of post-apocalyptic fiction that we have read before, but it’s not long before it takes a different path, and it’s the specifics emerge.

Back in Kiev the couple find that the weathering effect is lessened when close to water. When they try to return to their apartment on the island of Rusa­nivka, they discover that the island is now run by a community of refugees, and governed like in the post-Soviet era, by corrupt officials.

This short novel was originally published several months before the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, its detail deeply affected by the 2014 war that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Its relevance now though, is unmistaken. Chapeye is currently serving in the Ukrainian army. An end to the fighting cannot come soon enough, and then perhaps the author of this fascinating book can be left to write.

The place was removed from the famous tourist trails. None of the highest peaks for anyone to “conquer” were nearby, only ones of middling height. Far to our left, Petros peak protruded. That’s where the hikers go.

The rounded dome of Sheshul was closer. People go there less often. Our location was a few hundred meters lower in altitude, so not as interesting.

And the road leads nowhere, a natural dead end of steep slopes densely forested with spruce, firs, and pine. The old names for the peaks around here didn’t even show up on maps until smartphones came about. Web maps still show different names for some of them. Some time ago, I personally named one of the smaller mountains on a hiking app. I checked the route with Vasyl, climbed to the top, marked the place on the app, and gave it a name.

True, when I asked our inside man for the local name, Vasyl answered with uncertainty, jokingly invented a name on the spot, and then added, “Why do we need to name every hilltop anyhow?” So, I’m still unsure whether I climbed and named the right hill.

The highest peak in this area-the round-topped mountain we were traversing up in our Daewoo-has several names, just like Sagarmatha-Everest-Chomolungma, but an unknown, miniature version. To my and Zoïa’s delight, we noted the local curiousity of place names ending in -os or -ul. I made a mental note to ask or read up on why that is.

I will probably never find out now.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5