“A distinctive type of war literature is taking shape in Ukraine, one that rejects the universality of classical war narratives,” writes Yuliya Orlova, CEO of Ukraine’s Vivat Publishing. “It is not about romanticizing war, nor about the aesthetics of suffering. It is about recording a reality the world has no right to ignore.”

By Yuliya Orlova, CEO, Vivat Publishing

Soon it will be four years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Another winter of war–perhaps the hardest one yet. Exhaustion, loss, constant danger, blackouts, and the absence of heat. And at the same time, inner discipline, resilience, and the ability to hold on and record what is being lived through.

In Ukraine, we understand clearly: the main novel about this war has not yet been written. It must appear after victory, as a major act of reflection that will reshape not only our country, but the very idea of security in the democratic world.

Yet books, without which that future novel could never exist, are already being published. They are written by authors who are at the front, in the military, or in hospitals. They write poetry, prose, diaries–texts that are difficult to compare with anything in world literature.

This is a war that did not begin in 2022, but at least in 2014, with the start of Russia’s armed aggression in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. The full-scale invasion merely made obvious what Ukrainians have lived with for more than a decade.

Ukrainian war literature is not born in the silence of offices. It is written between combat missions, in dugouts, in destroyed cities. That is why it is so precise, painful, and honest.

Why Hemingway Knows Nothing

Today, a distinctive type of war literature is taking shape in Ukraine, one that rejects the universality of classical war narratives. A sharp and courageous definition of this phenomenon was offered by 25-year-old Ukrainian veteran and poet Artur Dron, in the title of his first prose book, Hemingway Knows Nothing.

Dron grew up reading Hemingway, Remarque, and Vonnegut. But he speaks plainly: their experience of war is not universal. Every war is terrifying in its own way. And the war in today’s Ukraine is not the frontlines of the twentieth century, nor an existential metaphor of a “lost generation.”

This is a war of drones and trenches, artillery and TikTok, mass crimes and the instant recording of reality. It is a war in which, without exaggeration, the fate of the democratic world is being decided right now. And Ukrainian authors who are currently on the front line are becoming direct participants in this great history.

Their texts resemble nothing readers have encountered before. They describe daily life and combat that European or American readers often simply cannot imagine. And that is precisely their strength: they expand our understanding of what war actually is. This matters for Europeans, over whom the threat is once again looming.

Authors Writing From Inside the War

At Vivat Publishing, we work with authors who have become members of the armed forces and who speak honestly about this experience. Our publishing portfolio already includes more than 50 books about the war and by soldier-authors.

In Fight or Retreat, Pavlo Belianskyi writes prose that immerses readers in the brutal reality of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It is an unflinching confession of people who never dreamed of being soldiers, but took up arms to defend their country after the start of the full-scale invasion. Belianskyi does not romanticize war, yet he does not deprive the text of hope. His characters endure because, behind them, stand their homes, their families, and their future.

The first print run of this book was destroyed along with more than 84,000 copies of Ukrainian publishers’ books during a Russian attack on the Faktor-Druk printing house in May 2024. Today, Pavlo Belianskyi and his book are contenders for Ukraine’s highest cultural honor, the Shevchenko National Prize.

Valerii Puzik, writer, artist, and filmmaker, approaches war as a transformative experience. His book Who We Were combines military memoir with autobiographical psychological drama. Puzik began working on this text back in 2015, while serving in the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps. Stretching across years, places, and losses, the book captures how war changes a person, slowly, irreversibly, forever.

Another of his books, Hunting for Happiness, is a collection of concise, piercing stories about the front line and de-occupied territories, where war does not disappear even after liberation. It is about people learning again how to trust, to live, to find joy in small things – despite minefields and ruins.

Women of Freedom and the Diary of Occupation

A special place in contemporary Ukrainian war literature belongs to texts that capture the continuity of struggle. They resonate strongly with Ukrainian readers today.

Women of Freedom by Maryna Mirzaieva–historian, researcher of the Ukrainian liberation movement, and servicewoman of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, call sign “Mamaika”–combines biographies of women from the OUN and UPA with the author’s personal diary entries from the front.

Maryna began this book as a historian, but the war changed her life: she joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and became one of those she writes about. This is why the text has such depth. It is a conversation between generations of women who, in different centuries, fought for the freedom of our country.

And finally, there is a book that has become a document of a crime. I Am Transforming… A Diary of Occupation. Selected Poems by Volodymyr Vakulenko consists of notes the writer kept before he was abducted and murdered by Russian occupiers in 2022. He buried the diary in his own yard. It was later found by another Ukrainian writer, Viktoriia Amelina, who herself was killed in a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk in 2023.

Instead of a Conclusion

Ukrainian war literature is a terrifying and vitally necessary experience. It is not about romanticizing war, nor about the aesthetics of suffering. It is about recording a reality the world has no right to ignore.

Today, Europe already feels the breath of a killing machine: Russia. It is advancing slowly but inexorably, testing the limits of tolerance, security, and memory. Ukraine found itself first in its path. And the experience of our soldiers, captured in books, can show the world what is not yet obvious to many: what war in the 21st century looks like, when the enemy destroys not only cities and people, but the very possibility of a peaceful future.

Ukrainian war literature is testimony from the present tense. And if these voices are not heard now, tomorrow they may be heard from other countries, in other languages, but about the same enemy.

Yuliya Orlova is the CEO of Vivat, one of Ukraine’s leading publishing houses.