Luko Dashwar's novel "The Legacy" (published 2023) is a crime novel immersed in a socio-historical context and explores the issue of "healing" memory and rebuilding the narrative of the past. These are crucial issues for contemporary Ukrainian society, which struggles with Russia not only for independence but also for memory and identity. In the framework of a classic detective novel, whose plot draws on the prose of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author analyzes the process of mental decolonization, manifested by the final break with the notion of a "Ukrainian-Russian cultural community," as well as the building of a sense of community in contrast to the aggressor state. In the novel, Ukrainianness is a value in the process of transformation and in clear opposition to Soviet and Russian mental models. In my paper, I use a methodology that treats popular literature as anthropological evidence, recording contemporary social processes.
