Behind Decorum's Veil

This book, published on the 150th anniversary of the birth of the author, Ivan Franko (1856 - 1916) contains two novellas: For the Home Hearth (Dlya domashnoho ohnyshcha) and Pillars of society (Osnovy suspilnosty). The original Ukrainian works were translated into English by Roma Franko, former Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Saskatchewan. The themes and subject matter of these two novellas depict real events that culminated in criminal trials covered by the author when he worked as a journalist for a Lviv newspaper. The evidence presented in the two court cases moved him to illuminate the socio-economic backdrop of the crimes and the motivations of their perpetrators. As Franko explores the social, economic, and philosophical contexts of the protagonists' thoughts and actions, he delineates a realistic and disturbing panoprama of the social strata of the society in which he lived. His sharpest barbs are directed at the moral decadence and insensitivity of the most powerful echelons of that society, a society that he strove to change by prodding his readers to rethink the values underlying the systemic social injustice depicted in these two novellas.