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…
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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 February 2025