Ruined Home : Sketches of War

This book came into being almost by accident: After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to Ukraine, several students of a Kyiv screenwriting school began to describe their impressions, telling what they saw and felt. They created their texts to distract themselves, to re-live difficult moments in their lives, and simply to talk about what was happening to them. Later, it became clear that these texts form a fascinating book, narrating a frank story about the war, a story of private people experiencing the Russian invasion. Volodymyr Hromov, a teacher at that screenwriting school, added several more eyewitness accounts to the students’ texts, excerpts from correspondence with friends and acquaintances. The book contains testimonies from those who left and those who stayed, those who sat under siege and who crossed the front line. It forms a chronicle of the beginning of a full-scale war, but also of the narrators’ reflections on the events they took part in, their search for a way out, and their hopes for the future. The volume’s contributors are Oleksandr Sivak, Oleksiy Dranhinis, Olha Apenko, Bohdan Bilyaev, Maryna Kuzmicheva, Anastasiya Tymoshenko, Tetyana Stepanova, Olha Horobets, Svitlana Yatsynich, Sima Vasilyeva, Yevhen Khvorostyanko and Natalya Bezmen.