From Ukraine's leading writer-activist comes an intimate account of
resistance and survival in the earliest months of the Russian-Ukrainian
war
"A vivid, in-the-trenches report from a Ukrainian city and its 'injured,
yet unbreakable' citizens."--Kirkus Reviews
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Serhiy Zhadan took to
social media to coordinate a network of resistance workers and send
messages of courage to his fellow Ukrainians. What began as a local
organizing effort exploded onto the international stage as readers
around the globe looked to Zhadan as a key eyewitness documenting
Russian atrocities.
In this powerful record of the war's harrowing first four months, Zhadan
works day and night in Kharkiv to evacuate children and the elderly from
suburbs that have come under fire. He sends lists of life-saving
medications to the West in the hopes of procuring them for civilians,
coordinates food deliveries, collects money for military equipment, and
organizes concerts. He shares photographs of the open sky--grateful for
every pause in the shelling--and captures images of beloved institutions
reduced to rubble. We'll restore everything. We'll rebuild everything,
he writes.
As the days pass, the city empties. Friends are killed. And when images
of the Bucha massacre are released, Zhadan's own voice falters: I'm
speechless. Hang in there, my friends. Tomorrow, we'll wake up one day
closer to our victory. An intimate work of witness literature, this
book is at once the testimony of one man entering a new reality and the
story of a society fighting for the right to exist.
