Looking at Women, Looking at War

"Remarkable...powerful, eloquently testifying to the horrific consequences of this conflict." —New York Times Book Review "Unsparing and impossible-to-forget... its shape and urgency dictated by war and by its author’s shining life so abruptly shredded into night." —The Telegraph "An effortlessly compelling voice, simultaneously intimate and universal." —Financial Times NOW A USA TODAY BESTSELLER WITH A FOREWORD BY MARGARET ATWOOD When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Now she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author. Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book. On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region.