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A War and Justice Diary
by Victoria Amelina
Book Reviewed by:Destined to be a classic, a poet's powerful look at the courage of resistance.
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. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.
Evacuating New York
My apartment in Kyiv doesn't have many old things: a large wall clock from the Brezhnev era; a porcelain rooster; childhood photos of my son's father, taken in the eighties in the Donetsk region; and finally my family photos, the faces of my son's great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. I took them all off the walls of a house in a small town on the contact line in the fall of 2021, less than six months before the full-scale invasion. I don't know what came over me, but suddenly I was scared for all these things: they needed to be saved, taken away, evacuated. Of course, people would have to be saved. But things do not have to consent to the evacuation; many people still have not agreed to leave their homes.
I keep calling people in New York, a small town in the Donetsk region, from where the clock, the rooster, and the photos come. In October 2021, I organized an essay contest for the high school students there. I know the winners well because their prize was a ...
What are you reading this week? (3/12/2025)
I just finished Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina. Oof! This is a seriously difficult but good book to read if you have any interest in what it's like to be on the ground in Ukraine during war. The a...
-Anne_Glasgow
What book or books are you reading this week? (02/06/2025)
I just started Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary by Victoria Amelina. The author was a Ukrainian who met some remarkable women who are/were active during the conflict, and the book talks about their efforts to both fight and document war crimes. Sadly, the author was killed...
-kim.kovacs
Victoria Amelina was an award-winning novelist and children's author living in Kyiv. Like so many others, her life changed on February 24, 2022, when Russian bombs began falling on her country. Deciding that the role of novelist was irrelevant in wartime, she began a nonfiction account of her experiences during the conflict. She felt, though, that the stories she truly wanted to tell were of the many remarkable women she met who were actively countering Russian aggression. The result is unlike any narrative I've experienced—and I use the word "experienced" deliberately here. The book isn't an uninterrupted linear tale with a definable narrative arc. Some pages contain nothing but disconnected, incomplete sentence. Some chapters contain a title but no other content. Repetition is common and individuals and events are introduced without context. The effect is astonishing; Amelina's work comes across as raw and immediate—a work in progress that will never be finished. It felt not so much like reading a book as uncovering an ancient manuscript one must decipher. Although the author doesn't pack a lot of emotion into the text, it nevertheless prompts a visceral reaction...continued
Full Review
(681 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Philippe Sands, author of East West Street, Professor of Laws, University College London
Rare, powerful and affecting, a work of principle and courage by a truly brilliant and inspiring writer. Sofi Oksanen, award winning author of Purge
Rarely ever have I read anything this mature about a war that is taking place right now. Reading Amelina's book feels like a lightning illuminating your heart.Victoria Amelina (1986–2023) was a Ukrainian novelist. She spent the last months of her life researching war crimes committed by Russian soldiers during their invasion of her country.
Those of us in the United States probably think of the Russia-Ukraine War as beginning on February 24, 2022, when Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. As Amelina makes clear in her unfinished war diary, Looking at Women Looking at War, however, those in Eastern Europe date the conflict as having started eight years earlier, in February 2014 during the Maidan Revolution (also known as the Revolution of Dignity).
In 1922, Ukraine became part of what was then the Soviet Union, but by 1991, the Soviet Union was on the verge of ...
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