Reviewed by Kate Tsurkan

Bora Chung’s “Red Sword” wastes no time plunging readers into an alien world that is both cruel and enticing, immediately challenging humanity to find a way to reclaim itself. We are first introduced to the narrator — a woman who remains nameless for most of the novel — as she recounts her budding intimacy with a lover aboard a slave ship traversing the far reaches of a galactic empire, only to witness his death shortly after they are cast onto what is dubbed the white planet. What starts as a flicker of dread from her lover’s untimely death swiftly grows into an unrelenting tension that saturates the novel from start to finish.

Reviewed by Anya Avrutsky

Written in the few months leading up to and following Russia’s full-scale invasion, the book bridges a documentary and surrealist style, capturing a city on the brink. Maksymchuk, a Ukrainian poet and translator from Lviv, began writing Still City six months before February 24th, from a building overlooking an old prison courtyard where political prisoners had been executed during WWII. Such a setting serves as a reminder of how little time has passed since the last war that ravaged Ukraine.

by Alexandra Magearu

a tumult of birds
like a little chaos
thick and fluttering
with treasures in their toothless mouths
cruel in the glacial light
(…)

by Olena Herasymiuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Viktoria Ivanenk

I am standing on the stage that
no longer exists
it’s not a stage — it’s a mass grave,
under it

buried alive, lie thousands of
men, women, and their children —

the dead, the living, and the unborn

by Miklós Vámos
Translated from the Hungarian by Ági Bori

As an officer of the armed forces, he made certain to stare the defiant privates in the eye until the last moment. However, he couldn’t stop the wrinkles from forming on his forehead. 

by Andriy Sodomora
Translated from the Ukrainian by Sabrina Jaszi and Roman Ivashkiv

There before me was a bare window without even the sheerest covering, and in an instant I took in the whole room: It was lit by a bright incandescent bulb dangling from the ceiling on a long wire. In the middle of the room, on a little stool directly under that light, sat an old woman, wrapped in some dark garment, her head covered by a dark kerchief.

An excerpt from the novel Vanilla Ice Cream by Đurđa Knežević
Translated from the Croatian by Ena Selimović

After nearly two consecutive shifts—afternoon into early morning—her body teetered between numbness and pain. Or rather, when at rest, it grew numb, and when she’d had to move, the pain would flare through her whole body, not just in its moved part.

Reviewed by Kate Tsurkan

Reading “The Eyes of Gaza” from Ukraine, I was reminded of how no war occurs in a vacuum — the fight for survival, freedom, and justice is never isolated, but part of a larger human story.

Interviewed by Olena Lysenko

“I’ve never had any taboos when it comes to humor. However, I would never joke about the victims of violence, and I do not support sexism or victim-blaming. That’s unacceptable for me. Humor always remains somewhat incorrect and absurd.”

Interviewed by Irina Costache

"For me, being able to read these stories fills in a lot of gaps. Many times, it's not because anyone in my family or the Romanians that I grew up with in Detroit are withholding that information, but something that particularly writers can do is make a whole world come alive, a whole time period come alive."