22 essays on Ukrainian novels from Kulish to Karpa. The book by Tetyana Trofymenko, a literary critic, or critic, as she is called in the literary environment, is dedicated to iconic novels that reflected the realities of the time and recorded stylistic and worldview changes in art. Novels that tell us about the life and main problems of Ukrainians from the 19th to the first third of the 21st century. The author interprets the works of Nechuy-Levytsky, Panas Myrny, Olga Kobylyanska, Valerian Pidmohylyny, Ivan Bagryany, Iryna Wilde, as well as the novels of Yuriy Andruhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, Oksana Zabuzhko, Maria Matios, Oleksandr Irvanets, Irena Karpa, etc. This is not a canon, not essays for preparing for the ZNO, but primarily an attempt to talk about the genre, about how ideologies and the social process affect creativity, as well as why they still exist discussions about the "great Ukrainian novel