Dr. Sasha Dovzhyk is simply a Ukrainian writer, writer and laminitis of Index: Institute for Documentation and Exchange. Her latest publication Apocalypse Baroque: Tales from Ukraine astatine War volition beryllium published successful the UK September 24th. She precocious participated successful Lviv Book Forum, September 11 to 13, successful integer concern with Hay Festival Global.
In its 5th twelvemonth of concern with Hay Festival Global, Lviv BookForum 2026 brought unneurotic writers from crossed the globe for 3 days of hybrid conversations exploring memory, displacement, grief and the enduring powerfulness of literature. Events from Lviv Book Forum are disposable to ticker escaped from anyplace successful the satellite connected Hay Festival Anytime—sign up here.
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This database below, of books written by Ukrainians successful English oregon translated from Ukrainian into English, sheds airy connected what has agelong been overshadowed by empires seeking Ukraine’s erasure: the country’s affluent literate contented and its contented of resistance. I person compiled this database erstwhile Russia targeted Ukrainian publishing infrastructure with missiles and destroyed much than 13 cardinal books successful a month—a 3rd of the country’s yearly people run. In this light, it is clip to see cautiously wherefore Ukrainian letters airs specified a menace to the Russian regime.
From books by canonical Ukrainian authors silenced by the Russian empire to works by modern writers who person enlisted successful the equipped forces, these texts are a usher to the country’s past and present, its literate experiments and divers taste geographies. They scope crossed genre and register—fin-de-siècle feminist mythmaking and poesy written successful frontline trenches, grounds assembled from a warfare crimes investigator’s unfinished manuscript and postmodern fabrication that watches an empire disintegrate from within. Reading these books is simply a signifier of restoring justness for a federation which has truthful agelong fought for the close to narrate its stories connected its ain terms.
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Lesia Ukrainka, Cassandra (HURI Books, 2024), translated by Nina Murray
Lesia Ukrainka is simply a turn-of-the-century writer who tackled cardinal themes of occidental canon from a feminist and anti-colonial perspective. Her prime to constitute successful the Ukrainian language, persecuted by the Russian empire, and to talk for her federation erstwhile it was stateless has for decades denied Ukrainka practice successful the satellite republic of letters. Nina Murray’s caller translation of her poetic play Cassandra helps america reappraisal the story of Trojan warfare today—from the position of a pistillate who was cursed to cognize the information but ne'er to beryllium believed.
Victoria Amelina, Looking astatine Women Looking astatine War (Harper Collins, 2025)
A novelist turned warfare crimes researcher, Victoria Amelina travelled her war-torn state photographing weaponry craters successful children’s playgrounds and signaling survivors’ testimonies, lasting alongside the women she called her sisters: lawyers, soldiers, journalists, depository workers warring for justice. She did not past to decorativeness her telling of their stories—killed by a Russian rocket onslaught successful 2023, two-thirds done the manuscript of Looking astatine Women Looking astatine War. Assembled by her adjacent friends and family, the book’s forced silences and bare pages go its ain signifier of testimony: a verdict for Amelina’s killers, and eternity for her voice. The publication received the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.
Maik Yohansen, Dr. Leonardo’s Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with His Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta, translated by Uilleam Blacker (HURI Books, 2026)
Maik Yohansen belongs to Ukraine’s alleged Executed Renaissance, the procreation of civilization makers purged successful the aboriginal 1930s by the Soviet regime. In 1937, helium was arrested and executed by the authorities alongside thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals. In his playful modernist caller astir an Italian doc and his “future lover” traveling done northeastern Ukraine, the scenery is the existent protagonist portion quality characters are treated arsenic modernist puppets. This “landscape novel” reads poignantly contiguous erstwhile the lands it explores are regular mined, polluted with explosives and mutilated by Russia’s subject aggression.
Olena Stiazhkina, Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI Books, 2024), translated by Dominique Hoffman
In 2014, Olena Stiazhkina, a writer and prof of past astatine the Donetsk National University, was forced to fly her metropolis nether Russian occupation. Donetsk is simply a focal constituent of her literate enactment and activism, for which she was awarded the Vasyl Stus Prize successful 2026. Stiazhkina’s eastbound contains multitudes: her penning challenges the stereotypical (post-)Soviet representation of the portion arsenic a lump of coal, a monochrome territory populated by lumpen proletariat. The writer evokes its analyzable multi-ethnic past which, among others, had accommodated Greeks from Crimea and German settlers, attracted Belgian and Welsh capitalists, agelong earlier it became a flagship concern tract of the Soviet Union, which again entailed wide displacements and reshuffling of the population. Her Cecil the Lion Had to Die is a caller astir the war, astir eastbound Ukraine, and astir history. It alternates betwixt Russian and Ukrainian, reflecting the linguistic flexibility of eastbound Ukrainian society—that is nevertheless politically charged.
Kateryna Zarembo, Ukrainian Sunrise: Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s, trans. Tetiana Savchynska (ASP, 2024)
Kateryna Zarembo’s publication is simply a nonfiction companion to Olena Stiazhkina’s novels. Zarembo excessively explores possibly the astir mythologised and demonised portion successful Ukraine, tracing however Soviet powerfulness sought to erase the Ukrainian and European past of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Against this engineered blank slate, Zarembo recovers the patriotic communities and writers, arsenic good arsenic shot ultras who kept Ukrainian individuality live successful the eastbound of the state from the aboriginal 2000s to 2014. A parent of four, a PhD successful Political Science, Zarembo finished the book, past joined the unpaid Hospitallers battalion arsenic a combat medic, past enlisted successful the Armed Forces—one much Ukrainian intelligence who chose to support the state with arms not words.
Yuri Andrukhovych, The Moscoviad, trans. Vitaly Chernetsky
Originally written successful 1993, The Moscoviad offers a presumption of Moscow from a colonised taxable alternatively than the accustomed Russian lens oregon fascinated outsider’s gaze. The caller is acceptable successful 1991 and begins wrong the literate dormitory of Moscow State University. It follows a Ukrainian writer haunted by KGB officers arsenic the empire disintegrates astir him—a illness enacted astatine each level: successful the plot, successful the novel’s fragmented form, and successful connection itself, arsenic Ukrainian, Russian, German, and obscenity intermingle. Postmodern, postcolonial, and darkly humorous, it captures the Soviet Union’s past gasp from the vantage of 1 of the peoples it had colonised.
Serhiy Zhadan, Voroshilovgrad (Deep Vellum, 2016), translated by Isaac Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes
Serhiy Zhadan’s Voroshilovgrad (2010) is acceptable successful a metropolis that nary longer exists—renamed 4 times successful the twentieth century, yet live successful the intimate memories of its characters. The novel’s leader Herman, an uprooted loser of the post-Soviet generation, is forced location to portion unneurotic a minefield of traumatic representation and instrumentality work for his onshore and community. Though written years earlier the war, the caller reads arsenic prophetic: it brims with violence, subject outfits, and men defending their territory against invaders. Immersed successful the myths and airy of the eastbound steppe, it marks the displacement of Ukraine’s centre of gravity eastward, crystallising a caller individuality connected the frontier. Since 2014, Luhansk/Voroshilovgrad has been occupied by Russia.
Artem Chapeye, Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns, trans. Zenia Tompkins
Artem Chapeye, a self-described pacifist and salient antheral feminist, enlisted the time aft 24 February 2022. Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns is his memoir and papers of the archetypal 3 years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Throughout, Russia and the fear, grief, and guilt it brings is named simply “gloom,” encompassing some the service and the intelligence toll it inflicts. Chapeye’s enquiry doesn’t shy distant from the contradictions experienced by a progressive left-wing intelligence forced to support his nine and values with arms.
Artur Dron, We Were Here (Jantar, 2024), translated by Yuliya Musakovska
Ukrainian lit has a almighty poetic tradition. One of the reasons is that abbreviated form, including poetry, is little babelike connected taste infrastructure and worldly conditions: dissimilar a novel, a poem tin beryllium written successful a trench, successful a labour camp, oregon memorised and passed successful whispers betwixt the communities of absorption to the imperial power. The postulation We Were Here was written mostly connected the frontline, wherever the twenty-four-year-old writer Artur Dron has served since 2022. Illustrated with children’s drawings sent to soldiers—which, Dron writes, gave him and his chap fighters the spot to support going—the postulation asks wherefore poesy matters successful wartime, erstwhile it tin support nary 1 and bring nary 1 back. Its reply is the publication itself: masterfully translated into English by the bilingual writer Yuliya Musakovska, it testifies, arsenic 1 poem puts it, that Ukrainian lit ‘now contains more’ of the soundlessness betwixt words than the words.
Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2021)
This publication by possibly the astir salient and prolific historiographer of Ukraine is an essential, intellectually engaging and elegantly written usher done Ukraine’s analyzable past and its presumption astatine the crossroads of history. Situated betwixt Central Europe, Russia, and the Black Sea, Ukraine has repeatedly served arsenic the strategical gateway empires fought to control—Roman and Ottoman, Third Reich and Soviet. Plokhy tells its past done the figures who tried to assertion oregon defy it, from Vikings and Cossacks to the architects of modern Ukrainian nationalist identity.
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Dr Sasha Dovzhyk is simply a Ukrainian writer, writer and laminitis of Index: Institute for Documentation and Exchange. Her latest publication ‘Apocalypse Baroque: Tales from Ukraine astatine War’ volition beryllium published successful UK connected 24 September 2026. She precocious participated successful Lviv Book Forum, 11-13 September 2026, successful integer concern with Hay Festival Global.
In its 5th twelvemonth of concern with Hay Festival Global, Lviv BookForum 2026 brought unneurotic writers from crossed the globe for 3 days of hybrid conversations exploring memory, displacement, grief and the enduring powerfulness of literature. Events from Lviv Book Forum are disposable to ticker escaped from anyplace successful the satellite connected Hay Festival Anytime – motion up here.
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