Looking at Women, Looking at War

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE

WITH A FOREWORD FROM MARGARET ATWOOD

'This book would always have been important evidence that the Ukraine people were suffering criminal attack. Written by a poet, it is also a work of literature, published after the author lost her life doing her research. It is an icon of a young woman’s heroism' Philippa Gregory

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. Then 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. Whena 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.

About the Author

Victoria Amelina was killed by a Russian missile in July, 2023. She was an award-winning Ukrainian novelist, essayist, poet, and human rights activist whose prose and poems have been translated into many languages. In 2019/2020 she lived and traveled extensively in the US. She wrote both in Ukrainian and English, and her essays have appeared in Irish Times, Dublin Review of Books, and Eurozine.

MEDIA REVIEWS

‘Rare, powerful and affecting, a work of principle and courage by a truly brilliant and inspiring writer’ PHILIPPE SANDS 'An important piece of testimony and a precious, powerful work of literature: a steady beam of light born amid darkness and violence’ GUARDIAN

‘This book will make you laugh, cry and marvel at the resilience of Ukrainians. Nothing I or my colleagues can report will ever be this powerful’ SUNDAY TIMES 'Arresting and moving … unsparing and impossible-to-forget’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘It transmits a powerful sense of chaos. It compels attentiveness’ OBSERVER

‘What the pages of Looking at Women Looking at War instantly make clear is just how much Amelina had to offer. About to start a Paris residency for displaced Ukrainian writers when she died, she was blessed with an effortlessly compelling voice, simultaneously intimate and universal' FINANCIAL TIMES

'Remarkable … powerful, eloquently testifying to the horrific consequences of this conflict' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW