Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler. But the strength of her work lies in the subtle descriptions of ordinary people going about their lives through Ukraine’s often chaotic recent history. The author explores both the roots of Russia’s aggression and its ramifications for Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Major historical events marked this decade, including the Maidan revolution in 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in the Donbas. Ms Pinkham spent ten years living in both Ukraine and Russia, having first travelled to the ex-Soviet region as a volunteer for the Red Cross in Siberia. Sophie Pinkham provides a very different form of travelogue in her reflective and humorous memoir about modern Ukrainian life. The besieged eastern cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro and Donetsk have remarkable histories, but face uncertain futures.īlack Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine. But the evocations of places made newly familiar by Russia’s invasion are especially poignant. The descriptions of Kyiv’s ancient metropolis, Lviv’s central European architecture and Odessa’s Jewish history are fascinating. Karl Schlögel’s study explores these urban histories by providing “portraits” of eight Ukrainian cities. Even their names reflect the external forces that have shaped the country: the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, for example, has at various points been referred to as Lvov (in Russian), Lwow (in Polish) and Lemberg (in German). Ukraine’s complicated history is expressed through its cities.
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