Yuriy Shcherbak

Yuriy Shcherbak pursued medicine and literature before entering national politics. A graduate of Kyiv's medical institute, he spent nearly three decades at the city's institute of epidemiology and infectious diseases. His work included rabies prevention and responses to cholera outbreaks in Ukraine and Uzbekistan. He also wrote fiction, plays, screenplays, and accounts of the Chornobyl disaster. ¹

During the last years of Soviet rule, Shcherbak served in the Soviet legislature and chaired Ukraine's Green Party. He then represented independent Ukraine in Israel, the United States, Mexico, and Canada. His diplomatic career overlapped with continuing writing on Ukraine's security and place in the world. ¹

Shcherbak's later books range from political thrillers set in an imagined future to essays about war and national memory. Dead Memory: Voices and Cries uses a future Ukraine to explore the consequences of losing historical memory and independence. The official Shevchenko Prize committee includes him among its 2026 laureates. ¹