Reading Ukraine: Fiction & Nonfiction
History, memoir and fiction that explore the past, present and future of an embattled land and people, their gradual, halting emergence of Ukrainian national identity and solidarity, and the deep roots of the current conflict in Ukraine.
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The Gates of Europe
This nuanced, in-depth history of Ukraine spans from ancient times to 2015, including its recent fight with Russia to preserve its political independence.
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Red Famine
Applebaum convincingly argues that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deliberately created famine conditions in Ukraine as an act of genocide from 1931-34, to replace ethnic Ukrainians with Russians to achieve a more compliant populace.
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Bloodlands
Describes how fourteen million people were murdered by Hitler's and Stalin's regimes in the area between Germany and Russia during the time when both men were in power and examines the motives and methods behind the mass murders.
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A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka
The gripping story of two intertwined journeys: a Ukrainian Jewish refugee family fleeing Russian persecution at the twilight of the Soviet era, and a young man seeking to reclaim a shattered and stigmatized past.
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Odessa
Describes the vibrant Black Sea port city of Odessa and the thriving Jewish population that included Alexander Pushkin, Isaac Babel, Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky and immunologist Ilya Mechnikov and the mass murders of the Romanian occupation during World War II.
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Maybe Esther
A Kiev native traces the story of her family in twentieth-century Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and Germany, conveying in a series of short meditations the formative experiences of ancestors including an assassin, a Bolshevik revolutionary, and a victim of the Nazis.
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On Our Way Home From the Revolution
These essays by a child of the Ukrainian diaspora who, in the aftermath of the 2014 revolution, became disillusioned and returned home consider her national, familial, and ideological heritage, and the roots of patriotism.
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Black Square
An expert in Slavic culture and literature describes the flourishing youth culture in the tragically corrupt Ukraine after the fall of the USSR, a movement whose members bore witness to protesters shot on Kiev's main square and Crimea annexed by Russia.
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In Wartime
This definitive, first-hand account from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine draws on interviews with Russian agents, weary historians, desperate civil servants and retirees from the villages that dot the country's famous farmland, creating a sweeping portrait of a disintegrating nation.
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The Ukrainian Night
Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, this lyrical and intimate book evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution.
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