The War Came To Us
Life and Death in Ukraine -- A Waterstones Book of the Year 2023
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5,0 • 1 Bewertung
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- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A WATERSTONES AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
A breathtaking exploration of Ukraine's past, present, and future, and a heartbreaking account of the war against Russia, written by a leading journalist who has lived and worked in Ukraine for over a decade.
'Vivid… Shocking… [Miller] brings a seasoned, personal perspective to his account of both the 16-month conflict and its wider roots.'
Daily Telegraph
'A beautiful blend of memoir, reportage and history...superb.'
Irish Times
'...powerful and insightful...Miller provides a human dimension to a bloody conflict.'
Kirkus Reviews
When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine just before dawn on 24 February 2022, it marked his latest and most overt attempt to brutally conquer the country, and reshaped the world order. Christopher Miller, the Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times and a foremost journalist covering the country, was there on the ground when the first Russian missiles struck and troops stormed over the border. But the seeds of Russia's war against Ukraine and the West were sown more than a decade earlier.
This is the definitive, inside story of its long fight for freedom. Told through Miller's personal experiences, vivid front-line dispatches and illuminating interviews with unforgettable characters, The War Came To Us takes readers on a riveting journey through the key locales and pivotal events of Ukraine's modern history. From the coal-dusted, sunflower-covered steppe of the Donbas in the far east to the heart of the Euromaidan revolution camp in Kyiv; from the Black Sea shores of Crimea, where Russian troops stealthily annexed Ukraine's peninsula, to the bloody battlefields where Cossacks roamed before the Kremlin's warlords ruled with iron fists; and through the horror and destruction wrought by Russian forces in Bucha, Bakhmut, Mariupol, and beyond.
With candor, wit and sensitivity, Miller captures Ukraine in all its glory: vast, defiant, resilient, and full of wonder. A breathtaking narrative that is at times both poignant and inspiring, The War Came To Us is the story of an American who fell in love with a foreign place and its people - and witnessed them do extraordinary things to escape the long shadow of their former imperial ruler and preserve their independence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
War correspondent Miller's heart-pounding debut describes in gritty detail the frontline fighting and key events preceding Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After witnessing the Kremlin's takeover of the Crimean Peninsula and the battle between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian separatists for Donetsk airport ("a mess of spattered blood, shattered glass, and mangled steel") in 2014, Miller crisscrossed the country and landed major scoops, including his discovery in Ukraine's Donbas region of a trove of execution orders—the "first hard evidence of war crimes" committed by Russia's proxies in the fight. After the war broke out in 2022, Miller traveled under enemy fire to the cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut, where he mingled with survivors hiding in the basements of damaged buildings, and to Kiev, which was under aerial assault from drone attacks. Miller vividly illustrates the risks correspondents take (at one checkpoint, "a hulk of a man with a snarling face sat me down and screamed at me for an hour.... And he told me he was going to kill me unless I confessed to being an American spy"), but readers hoping for insights into the historical and cultural fault lines underscoring the conflict will have to look elsewhere. Still, this is frontline reporting at its finest.
Kundenrezensionen
Great!
It's a really great book, describing not only the Russian invasion, but also the life of an American who happened to be stranded in Bakhmut long before the war.