Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War

A selection of Ukraine’s leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasion

On 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine’s writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.

From tearing-downs of Russia’s use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.

Since 2007 Mark Andryczyk has been teaching Ukrainian literature at Columbia University and administering the Ukrainian Studies Program at its Harriman Institute. He is author of the monograph ’The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction’ (University of Toronto Press, 2012) - Ukrainian edition (Piramida, 2014) - and a translator of Ukrainian literature into English. He is editor and compiler of Writing From Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965 (Penguin, 2022).