Memoirs

2023

#Mariupol #Hope

by Nadia Sukhorukova

Could anyone imagine that in the twenty-first century, a city of an independent European country could be erased from the face of the earth, while its people were put on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe? For almost three months, in real-time, the whole world had been watching the Russian army slowly destroy Mariupol—one of the key cities of eastern Ukraine. “I was born in Mariupol and lived there all my life. It’s the city of my childhood, of my love and my happiness. I’ve seen it in different shapes and forms, but I’ve never thought that I would see it dead. I couldn’t even imagine that I would be describing its agony. The characters of this book are real people. They are my friends, relatives, and neighbors. During the blockade, bombardments, constant shelling, and hunger, we, the residents of Mariupol, tried to survive. I was writing down everything that was happening to us to keep my sanity. I didn’t think I had a chance to escape this hell and that’s why I described all events as they really happened”, writes Nadia Sukhorukova about her book.

Memoirs

2022

24.02.

by Andriy Meronyk

"24.02" is a war diary. The book tells a real story about a company of young people who found themselves against their will in the middle of the war. It is about how each of them froze either from fear or from cold when a rocket hit somewhere nearby and a powerful explosion broke some windows and activated alarms. It is about how each of them tried to be useful to the country, about the evolution of their fears and doubts. It is about what they discussed, what they thought about and what they believed in. This book is about ordinary people, ordinary Ukrainians.

77 days of February. Ukraine between two symbolic dates of the Russian war ideology

Memoirs

2022

77 days of February. Ukraine between two symbolic dates of the Russian war ideology

by Marichka Paplauskaite (Compiler), Authors: Inna Adrug, Anna Argirova, Kateryna Babkina, Tetyana Bezruk, Oleksandra Gorchynska, Inna Zolotukhina, Vera Kuriko, Olena Livytska, Olga Livytska, Svitlana Oslavska, Marichka Paplauskaite, Eva Raiska, Anya Semenyuk, Zoya Khramchenko, Margarita Chimyris, Iryna Yaroshynska

As a child, she could not understand why people in films about the blockade of Leningrad were always lying down. And when Mariupol was besieged by the Russians, and she and her husband lived for many days without water, food and heat under constant shelling, she realized that when you lie down, you save strength and energy. "77 Days of February" included reports written by journalists of the Reporters media in the period between February 23 and May 9 — two symbolic dates for Russian military ideology. The invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine stopped the number of days and pushed Ukrainians back to the intervening time, where February — the month of the beginning of the great war — still lasts. In the meantime and in these candid stories, there is pain, fear, hatred, and sometimes despair. But the main thing is hope. This is a bare nerve and an honest voice of the new Ukrainian reality.

True stories

2022

A journey to the afterlife. Mariupol

by Evgen Shishatskyi

As with every Ukrainian, on February 24, 2022, the author's world turned upside down. In Mariupol, my mother and friends were under fire, with whom I lost contact. Eugene decides to go to the occupied East to help evacuate people. "Journey to the afterlife. Mariupol" is the confession of a volunteer driver who miraculously got out of Mariupol. The author describes a real story about a journey to the "edge of frozen time", talks about people whose life choices and fate brought them here, about their choice, "this one, thoughtless, but conscious. In search of their own. In search of myself. With a fatalistic readiness for new experiences."

Short stories

2022

After the 24th

by Vladyslav Ivchenko

“Excuse me, but the war has begun.” These words of the writer Vladyslav Ivchenko marked the beginning of February 24th. It was the day when life changed forever. Standing in line at the draft board, he realized that he had his own war story now. “My granny had one, my parents had none, and I was always sure that I’d never have mine own.” After the 24th is a collection of short stories and poetry about war, a record of what Ukrainians have experienced and are experiencing now. The book is about those who are ready to die for freedom and those who are ready to survive at any cost; it is about lovers and beloved; it is about losses that make one howl in pain, and laughter that helps preserve sanity. It is about betrayal and fear; it is about those at the frontlines and those away from them. Something is true to life and something is fictional. Be careful as the texts are deceptive, and often the ones you will believe to be true, will turn out to be fictional and vice versa.

Chronicles of one hungerstrike. 4 and a half steps

True stories

2020

Chronicles of one hungerstrike. 4 and a half steps

by Oleh Sentsov

“Chronicles of one hunger strike” is a diary of Oleh Sentsov, the Kremlin prisoner, who had been keeping it since May 2018, the third day after he announced indefinite hunger strike with the demand to free Ukrainian political prisoners. Day by day, throughout 145 days, despite moral pressure and physical exhaustion, Oleh had been frankly and honestly writing in his notebook in small, illegible letters, extremely accurately recording his everyday life in Russian prison, his observations and thoughts. After his release the author miraculously managed to take his notes out of Russia. “4 and a half steps” is a collection of small prose by Oleh Sentsov, written in a Russian prison. What does a man feel, having gotten to prison for the first time? How do prisoners live in tight and dirty cells, behind thick walls and muddy windows with double grid? What rules and laws one should obey, having gotten there? The author tells as objectively and critically as he can about prisoners’ life and circumstances that led them to captivity—he does not justify, nor criticise, but only witnesses. Striking, sometimes horrifying facts with verified accurate details create a convincing background, where events of numerous lives unfold. The author usually does not make any conclusions—he leaves this right to the reader.

Relationships

2019

Daughter

by Tamara Horikha Zernia

The events of the novel unfold in the spring and summer of 2014 in Donetsk. Donbas is a zeroing out point; it’s a place of strength where the country’s most important questions have sounded. And only there are the necessary answers hidden. It was here that the novel’s nameless heroine lost her family, home, job, and illusions, and it was here that she gathered up the fragments of her life and discovered new meaning and new support. Step by step the reader observes the process of transformation, the metamorphosis of a crop-sower into a warrior. Because war is when you eat the earth. So what’s more important than feeding the earth?

True stories

2019

District D

by Artem Chekh

District D is a collection of stories united through a common time period and location, from which gradually emerges a portrait of the author against the backdrop of “other shores,” on which his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood passed. The book paints a self-critical portrait of the author in which one can discern the features of husbandry and cosmopolitanism, pettiness and magnanimity, and much else. Simultaneously, it paints a group portrait of a few dozen more or less registered residents of the aforementioned Cherkasy district with their more or less successful attempts at surviving the unexpected transition from post-soviet to newly independent Ukraine. According to the author, District D served as therapy for his own traumatic experiences because he wrote it while serving in the war: “I would write it out of me and would feel better; I escaped from that war and those experiences into writing.”

True stories

2022

Ferocious February 2022. Evidence of the first days of the invasion.

by Darya Bura, Evgenia Podobna

On February 24, 2022, Ukrainians woke up in another reality: the sky was torned by the roar of Russian fighter jets, Russian missiles were flying at Ukrainian cities, subway stations have become the shelters. In this new reality, the concept of absolute security no longer existed. The first days of the war were very emotional and scary. You don't know what to do, you can't keep up with the news. You can't do anything because of these news... For not allowing anyone to rewrite our history, to put in it something that did not exist, like the Russians do when they swear black is white, we decided to collect people's memories of the first days of a full-scale invasion. To remember...

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

2018

Footprints On The Road

by Markus Valerii

This unique novel is written by the military officer and is based on true events. It explores the impact of war and the challenges it poses on one’s personality and character. After the main character was deployed to the war zone in the 3rd year of his military service, his brigade landed on the stretch of the front line that saw the heaviest fighting. Each new day could be the last for the young armored vehicle mechanic, who was shelled, lost his friends, and overcame psychological trauma. Does war necessarily leave one broken and traumatized, or could it build character, become just another part of life, and encourage self-reflection? The novel’s focus is not so much on the war as on the life, pain and experiences of the man who found himself in an extreme situation.

True war & combat stories

2021

Fugue 119. Tonality of captivity

by Igor Mykhaylyshyn

"Fugue 119" is based on true story of the "Donbas" battalion volunteers who were captured by Russians after the famous battle at the city of Ilovaisk (Donbas). The book describes how it is to be a prisoner of war. It was impossible to write about the events in a traditional writing method and author invented his own. He applied the principle of composing a fugue - a polyphonic piece of music to his writing. The structure of the book is based on a double three-part fugue with a code. This makes it possible to fully convey the plexus of pain and horror - the every day routine of captivity, where the way out is possible only through death. "Fugue 119" is a continuation of the book "Dance of Death" and is the second in the upcoming trilogy "2014". "Fugue 119" was long listed for the "BBC Book of the Year 2021"

Humanities & Social Sciences

October 2020

How Ukraine Lost Donbas

by Denys Kazanskyi, Maryna Vorotyntseva

This book is not about war."How Ukraine lost Donbas" is the latest history of two regions of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk.This book is about the economic catastrophe of the region, Russian propaganda expansion, the formation of powerful financial and political clans, and the origins of separatism.We talk about how the powerful elites of Donbas first lit the fire of enmity, then burned in it themselves, pushing their region into the abyss of bloodshed.

Fiction

June 2023

I am Yustyna

by Karina Savaryna

Since February 24, thousands of women like Justyna have crossed the border every day. With children, pets, and sick parents, they ran away from the horrors brought by the Russian army into Ukraine. Justyna recently retired but hasn’t lost a taste for life. But the war changed everything. An intelligent and smart teacher, she becomes a refugee in Europe, along with thousands of other Ukrainian women. “Who are you?” “I am Justyna,” she would always answer the question that seemed to come from everywhere. Together with Justyna, readers travel through a long road toward the search for the self in the world that dramatically expanded and yet existed only at home, in Ukraine. Foregrounding the traumatic experience of becoming a refugee, the loss of home, and a reconsideration of a new life, the novel answers the question of who really is Justyna as well as every Ukrainian woman who lived through the experience of forced displacement.

ISOLATION. Secret prisons of Donbas in the stories by people saved from torture and death

True stories

2020

ISOLATION. Secret prisons of Donbas in the stories by people saved from torture and death

by Daria Bura, Iryna Vovk

The book of recollections of those, who went through hell and survived: prisoners of Donetsk and Luhansk prisoners, infamous "Isolation", Donbas colonies. These are the stories of those who were exchanged as prisoners of war on December 29, 2019, those who kissed the Ukrainian land at the "Maiorsk" checkpoint. Despite the controversy over the exchange itself, those who sacrificed their lives, families, peace, and health returned home. Ukrainian soldiers, journalists, bloggers, military aides, doctors, and locals talk about the life "before" and "after", about the life of Donbas during the war, about the atrocities and crimes of militants, about the horrors and tortures in captivity.

The Arts

2021

Icons on the Ammunition Boxes

by Sonia Atlantova, Oleksandr Klymenko

This publication is dedicated to the artistic project "Icons on the Ammunition Boxes" by Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko. The icons painted on fragments of weapons boxes brought from the front lines are silent witnesses of the war in Eastern Ukraine and at the same time evidence of the victory of life over death (not only symbolic, but also real). Since the spring of 2015, the project had a charitable purpose of supporting the Mykola Pyrogov First Voluntary Mobile Hospital that provided medical assistance to the Ukrainian army and to the civilians in combat zone of Donbas.

True stories

2015

Ilovaisk

by Yevhen Polozhii

Ilovaisk (2015) is a novel about the tragic events of the summer/autumn 2014 when part of Ukrainian Armed Forces were ambushed by the Russian army near Ilovaisk in the Eastern Ukraine. The author interviewed more than a hundred servicemen in hospitals and on the front lines - those who took part in the campaign. Based on their recollection of events, he written 16 short stories, all connected by characters, time and place. The book has become a bestseller and has several reprints in Ukraine. The book was turned into a screenplay. The movie called “Border” is currently being produced based on the book. A theatre play Eastern Vacations by Stozhary Theater was staged in Montreal, Canada. A sculpture of the soldier and a little girl has been mounted in the Museum of Anti Terroristic Operation in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine to commemorate the story of Ilovaisk defenders told by the old man named Ivan in the book. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute, Ilovaisk is among 30 iconic books since Ukraine's independence.

Fiction

October 2017

Internat (Orphanage)

by Serhiy Zhadan

...One day, you wake up and see the fire burning outside your window. You didn't start it. But you the one who will have to put it out......January 2015. Donbas. Pasha, a teacher at one of the schools, watches as the front line steadily approaches his home. It happens that he is forced to cross this line. To return later. And to return he needs to decide whose side his house is on...

True stories

2020

Lost Island

by Natalia Gumenyuk

The Lost Island is a collection of reportage pieces from the Russian- occupied Crimea by a well-known journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk, who visited the peninsula in 2014– 2019. Her book tells the true stories and tragedies of people whose lives took a drastic turn after 2014. Some of these Crimean residents live under occupation, others in a different country. What is the unvarnished truth of their stories? Businessmen and retirees, Crimean Tatars, students and activists, human rights advocates and soldiers, people of varied political and ideological affiliations tell their stories: some want to share their quiet, long suppressed pain while others are tired of silently succumbing to fear.

Biography & True Stories

June 2023

Love, Dad

by Valeriy Puzik

He could have been showing his son the world, and just stayed by his side. Instead, he joined the army to protect his country in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Despite the exhausting days of combat, the main character doesn’t forget that he is a father, too. This book came to be as a conversation with the son who remains far away, yet always close — in his father’s heart. The book doesn’t include battle scenes or combat descriptions. Valeriy Puzik tries to demonstrate that even at the time of the most ruthless wars, a human remains at the center of everything. He leads readers through fragments of memories, reflections about today, and dreams about the future, creating his own battlefield reality. This book is about the here and now that thousands of soldiers experience during the war. It’s a raw nerve that leaves no space for feelings of indifference towards the world around. It’s a narrow path over the precipice that must be crossed to finally see the light — children, loved ones, and a peaceful homeland.

Biography & True Stories

October 2019

Maidan. First-Hand Stories

by Olena Chebaniuk, Oksana Novalova

Five interviews with participants and witnesses of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine events make up the first book of the series of oral histories Maidan. First-Hand Stories initiated by the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity. Scientists collected more than 200 interviews between 2014 and 2019 and today the project is still underway. Euromaidan, a dramatic period in the recent history of Ukraine, unfolds in the memories, impressions, and reflections of its participants. They share experiences of personal importance which left the biggest mark on them. According to the principles of oral history as a scientific method, the interviews are published with the preservation of the linguistic and stylistic features of the stories, only with minimal edits needed to facilitate reading. The book is for a wide range of historians, ethnologists, linguists, museum workers, and sociologists, as well as anyone interested in the history of Ukraine.

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