This book offers a nuanced exploration of Donetsk and Luhansk regions prior to the 2014 Russian invasion. While the region, collectively known as Donbas, frequently appears in news headlines, it remains under-researched by scholars, and myths about it abound. Combining rigorous research and captivating narration, Kateryna Zarembo debunks common myths about the region, such as its long-standing gravitation towards Russia and its rejection of everything Ukrainian. Through multiple trips to the region and interviews with the locals, the author paints a very different picture of the region than the one often seen in the media: Donetsk and Luhansk have been shedding their Soviet past and reestablishing themselves as Ukrainian up until the 2014 invasion.

Kateryna Zarembo takes the reader to pockets of the region most of us will never see, and amplifies the voices of locals whose agency has historically been denied first by the Soviet myth of Donbas, and then by the political elites of Ukraine. Since the 2014 Russian invasion, and especially since the full-scale war, the region has become the site of the most intense fighting, and many of the places mentioned in this book are now reduced to ruins. This book is an essential read to get to know the Ukrainian East and its people, now forever altered by the Russian invasion.

What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust memories play in solving and investigating the criminal cases? How does a detective’s mind work? The answers to these and many other fascinating questions are found in this book. Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Ukraine and wrote his memoirs after immigrating to the US in 1993. Translated by Marat Grinberg, a prolific scholar of Russian and Jewish literature and cinema, the memoirs tell the rich and poignant story of Goldis’s life and what it took for a Jew to navigate and survive in the halls of Soviet power.

What happens to language during war? Does it become superfluous to actions? Is it twisted? Broken? Lost? In wartime, even the meaning of simple words can change, expand, contract, acquire new resonances and sounds. A Ukrainian Dictionary of War began with the fragments of experiences spoken in the new language of life under war and became a way to document a nation’s shared losses, pain, and belief in victory.

In 2022, poet Ostap Slyvynsky undertook the role of wartime lexicographer, carefully collecting and compiling a dictionary of witness to Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine. Among the voices represented in A Ukrainian Dictionary of War are those who were forced to leave their homes and venture into the unknown, aid volunteers, medics, soldiers, social activists, and artists. All very different people connected by the experience that war has appeared in their lives.

A documentary project published in conjunction with the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series, Volume 15. Bilingual Edition.

This title tells the story of four families whose world undergoes radical changes when the Soviet Union suddenly collapses, an independent Ukraine emerges, and neo-imperial Russia starts a war by occupying Ukrainian Crimea and part of Donbas.

This novel is a must-read for those who seek to deepen their understanding of Ukrainians from the Donbas and how history and local identity have shaped the current war with Russia.

This novel is about being human in the modern world and tells the story of Yora, an immigrant from Ukraine to the United States.

A gentle soul with a keen sense of human relationships’ nuances, Yora falls in love with Sebastian, a charming acquaintance who hints at a deep connection between them. But their relationship ends, sending her into a period of despair and grief.

Filled with mystical allusions, Love Life is a compelling story of self-discovery amid the challenges of adapting to a new life.

Brothers Anton and Tolik return to bury their mother. But Russia’s war and the activities of the separatists turn this mundane task into a logistical and ideological challenge. The brothers and other village residents have to overcome isolation and a lack of light and water. The only fragile hope for a ceasefire is the so-called harvest truce.

Zhadan skillfully weaves the rhythms of life—birth, death, planting, harvesting—into a reality where war devalues them. What should be sacred becomes insignificant, and the play’s characters must fight the war’s dehumanizing impact.

And so A Harvest Truce is more than just a family story; it is a mirror that reflects the cost of war and the resilience of those who experience it.

In this title, Lesia Ukrainka, using the prism of classical mythology and intertextual practice, draws attention to the problems of colonialism and cultural enslavement, patriarchy and the enslavement of women, as well as the dilemma of the visionary writer who sees the truth along with the consequences, but, like the archetypal Cassandra, is powerless to convey it to his contemporaries and compatriots.

Having received significant critical acclaim upon publication in Ukrainian, this work is also strongly autobiographical and a form of Ukrainka’s implicit self-projection into the new Ukrainian cultural canon. Presented here in a contemporary, sophisticated English translation attuned to psychological nuance, this play is sure to attract the attention of the modern-day reader interested in Ukrainian literature and culture.

Written in diary form, Olena Stiazhkina’s book tells the story of events in and around Donetsk during the Russian invasion and occupation of 2014. In this personal account, she documents the first bloody chapter of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

This diary records events from March 2, 2014, when the first wave of pro-Russian protests swept across eastern Ukraine after Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, to August 18, 2014, the day a convoy of civilian Ukrainian refugees was deliberately destroyed by Russian troops.

Along with her story, Stiazhkina also shares her observations of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, doing so with wry humor, dry wit, and sarcasm.

“My name is Olena Stiazhkina. I was born and raised in Donetsk…
In March 2014, Russians came into Donetsk and Luhansk—or rather, they drove in from Russian oblasts just across the border—dressed up as “protesters.” In April, the Russians were no longer cautious or circumspect; they came in as armed special forces. In August, before the battle of Ilovaisk, Russians came in openly, as regular soldiers.
The catastrophe of occupation unfolded gradually, hour by hour, day by day. That’s probably why, at first, we couldn’t believe it; then we couldn’t stop it. For the entire world, this part of the Russians’ war against Ukraine was invisible, hidden behind the smoke screen of a crudely cobbled-together “suffering people of Donbas.”
We too were invisible: all of us who woke up one fine morning as Ukrainians.”

In Yuliya Musakovska’s newest poetry collection, The God of Freedom, she reveals, facet by facet, the landscape of a turbulent, contemporary Ukraine. Equal parts intimate and expansive, the poems follow the societal struggles of women and their families, the trauma of returning soldiers, and the peoples’ future under the shadow of war and its tumultuous past. Translated by Musakovska and Olena Jennings, The God of Freedom reveals a moving, devastating, and all too necessary glimpse of Ukraine from one of the country’s most celebrated poets. Vibrant, relevant, and masterful, this volume stands out as a must-read work in translation, full of profound insights and captivating eloquence. With cover art by Anastasiia Starko.

Lost in Living presents Halyna Kruk’s unpublished work from the immediate “pre-invasion” years when life in Ukraine was marked by turmoil but full-scale war was not yet normalized. In these “dear poems that don’t pain [her] like those about the war do,” Kruk uses imagery and tone to underscore poetic agency, at times juxtaposing figurative language with a calm, direct voice to bring her poems to life.

Nature cannot be relied on to sustain nor renew, and life is shown to be fundamentally vulnerable. “Calm” is a seductive state of mind capable of cunning, and the speaker is unable to find a place where she can thrive or grow. Still, daily tasks emerge as life-affirming and a welcome constant. It is ultimately a movement toward survival that drives the immediacy and urgency of Kruk’s poetry.

Volume 16 in the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Poetry Series. Bilingual Edition.