Truth interrupted

This unique account of lives turned upside down in Ukraine after the Russian invasion was edited by friends after the author's death

- 

It is expected that a book review will be written with some degree of critical distance, but, in this case, distance is not possible. On 27 June, 2023, Victoria Amelina was in a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk when it was hit by a Russian missile. She died of her injuries a few days later, leaving the book she was working on unfinished. Shock and grief at her killing continues to reverberate among those close to her, and among her wider circle of friends, of whom I was one. She was 37 and the mother of a young son.

The full-scale Russian invasion transformed every aspect of Amelina's life. She had previously been a writer of fiction, but it was not a time for novels. She began to write poems - the form that could best deal with the fragmentation of meaning and language wrought by war. Above all, though, it was a time for hard-headed documentation.

In this book, her only work of nonfiction written in English to reach the widest possible audience - she set down a personal account of the terror of unfolding events. But she also wanted to tell a wider story. Into her diary she wove portraits of other extraordinary women and their work - including a soldier, a human rights activist, a librarian, a curator. She wanted her book, ultimately, to play its part in efforts to obtain justice for the outrages committed on her country and compatriots.