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“I’m here because I want to be useful in wartime” is how Victoria Amelina introduced herself to a group documenting war crimes in Ukraine.
That’s when the Ukrainian novelist and poet switched to nonfiction, interviewing Ukrainian women in their resistance against Russia.
This book is both Amelina’s wartime diary and an account of 11 extraordinary women, including a prominent lawyer turned soldier, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a writer and a librarian.
She creates an evocative timeline of the war in the most damaged parts of the country but became a casualty herself in July 2023, killed by a Russian missile hitting the restaurant where she was dining with colleagues.
“My problem is that I promised my son I would not go to Kyiv, but would stay in Lviv,” she writes.
In fact, she was in Kramatorsk when the missile struck – much closer to the frontline, her book left unfinished.
