Ukraine, War, Love
A Donetsk Diary
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In Ukraine, War, Love, Olena Stiazhkina depicts day-to-day developments in and around her beloved hometown Donetsk during Russia’s 2014 invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian city. An award-winning fiction writer, Stiazhkina chronicles an increasingly harrowing series of events with sarcasm, anger, humor, and love.
The diary opens on March 2, 2014, as the first wave of pro-Russian protest washes over eastern Ukraine in the wake of Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, and it closes on August 18, 2014, the day a convoy of civilian Ukrainian refugees is deliberately slaughtered by Russian forces. Early on, Stiazhkina is captured by pro-Russian forces while she browses for books but is freed when one of her captors turns out to be a former student. Vignettes from her personal life intermingle with current events, and she examines ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. We walk with local dogs and their owners; we meet a formidable apartment building manager who shames occupiers and dismantles their artillery from the roof of her building; we follow a family evacuated to Kyiv whose young son builds checkpoints out of Legos. Olena Stiazhkina’s Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary is a fierce love letter to her country, her city, and her people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Stiazhkina (Cecil the Lion Had to Die) provides a harrowing account of Russia's 2014 takeover of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Beginning soon after separatists occupied Donetsk's municipal buildings in early March, Stiazhkina shares stories about how the city's residents were affected by the invasion. Her profile subjects include an elderly, pro-Russian railway engineer who suffered a heart attack after he found himself in the crossfire of sparring Russian insurgent groups and a photographer who learned from a passing reference at a press conference that his wife, a doctor, had been killed while caring for Ukrainian soldiers. Recounting her own experience of the occupation, Stiazhkina discusses learning to distinguish the sound of mortars from anti-aircraft missiles, making contingency plans with her sister in case they needed to flee Donetsk, and comforting her nine-year-old son during long missile barrages. Stiazhkina balances a clear-eyed assessment of her country's leadership ("Generals steal, civil servants take their cuts from city budgets and... politicians tell lies") with her faith in Ukrainian civilians, "the friends and strangers who—today, and tomorrow, and always—will... rescue, and build, and cook, and forgive, and give, and heal, and defend." Filled with gut-wrenching anecdotes and rousing prose, this is an alarming look at the human toll of Russia's ongoing attacks on Ukraine. Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly identified the book's source language as Ukrainian.
