Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary

In this devastating posthumous memoir, Ukrainian novelist Amelina (1986–2023) provides a hair-raising account of the war in Ukraine. When Russia attacked Kyiv in 2022, Amelina transformed overnight from “a novelist and mother into a war crimes researcher.” Moved to document the horrors around her, Amelina photographed “shell holes in library walls and the ruins of schools and cultural centers,” and recorded survivor and eyewitness testimony. Discussing how she used that evidence to build war crimes cases against Russian troops, Amelina singles out other women who engaged in acts of resistance, including Zhenia Podobna, a “lawyer turned soldier” who helped liberate towns in east Ukraine, and Yulia Kakulya-Danylyuk, a small-town librarian whose recordkeeping helped Amelina piece together details about the murder of children’s author Volodymyr Vakulenko. The inclusion of Amelina’s unedited notes, ranging from her thoughts about the effects of trauma on memory to her reflections on a trip to the captured city of Kherson, give the narrative a heightened immediacy and underline the tragedy of her death in a Russian missile strike. This is not to be missed. Agent: Emma Shercliff, Laxfield Literary. (Feb.)