My Women is a stunning and rare novel comprising of a series of searing vignettes about women confronted by the countless brutalities of war. It locates the voices and devastating experiences of those who have been silenced, those who have lost loved ones, those who have fought and persevered, and those who have broken down.
With an original style and with poetic repetition, the nameless protagonists, ‘My Women’, bring succinct and emotionally charged stories that evoke life during war in Ukraine with an intensity that is excruciatingly difficult yet deeply moving.
My Women won the BBC Book of the Year 2024 in Ukraine and was shortlisted for EBRD Literature Prize 2025. The book has been published in the US, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Greece, Lithuania and Italy, with translations forthcoming in Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain and Finland.
Praise
‘Here is a book that makes music of conscience, that finds rhythm in a time of fear, that offers language in a silence after air raids and builds a raft of words to try to sail out of the bombed-out city.’
— Ilya Kaminsky
‘A strikingly multi-faceted and intimate portrait of the experience of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.’
— Ainsley Morse
‘This is a wonderful book, which I read recently in Kyiv. It’s the story of Russia’s invasion told through the voices of women: mothers, wives, grandmothers, collaborators, refugees, soldiers, citizens, a polyphonic and human portrait of a nation at war, vividly imagined and painfully authentic and touching. Recommended.’
— Luke Harding
