Ukrainian author killed by Russia awarded UK’s prestigious Orwell Prize in political writing
Two years after her tragic death in a Russian missile strike, Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina was posthumously awarded on June 25 the prestigious U.K. Orwell Prize for her book “Looking at Women, Looking at War.”
Amelina was a finalist among notable nominees in the political non-fiction category, including American journalist Anne Applebaum.
Kim Darroch, the chair of judges for the Orwell Prize, called Amelina’s book “an unforgettable picture of the human consequences of war."
A famous Ukrainian author, Amelina took up work as a war crimes researcher following the start of Russia’s full-scale war in 2022.
The posthumous recognition of Amelina’s work is a bittersweet moment for Ukraine’s cultural sphere, which continues to lose artists to the war both on the front line and in attacks against civilians, while Russian artists — regardless of their positions — are being reintegrated into Western cultural life.
“It’s a significant victory for our culture — a book by a Ukrainian author, written in English, has received a prestigious international prize,” journalist and cultural manager Tetyana Teren, who was a close friend of Amelina, told the Kyiv Independent.
“I’m certain that if she were still with us, Victoria would have used this recognition to share vital messages with an international audience about the true reasons behind Russia’s imperial war against Ukraine and Europe and about the urgent need to keep fighting for the future, even as some foreign politicians call for peace without justice built on compromise with the aggressor."
Amelina is among the 208 Ukrainian artists who have been killed by Russia since 2022, according to statistics provided by Ukraine’s Culture Ministry in mid-June.
Amelina died on July 1 after succumbing to serious injuries sustained in a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Oblast. She was only 37 years old and is survived by her son.
Amelina was in Kramatorsk with a delegation of Colombian writers and journalists when two Russian Iskander missiles struck their location in a popular downtown restaurant. Twelve other people were killed in the strike and 60 were wounded.
Kramatorsk is a frequent target of Russian attacks due to its role as a logistical hub for Ukrainian forces.
At the time of Amelina’s murder, the manuscript for “Looking at Women, Looking at War” remained incomplete.
A group of her closest friends and colleagues undertook the responsibility of finalizing the manuscript for publication, striving to minimize editorial intervention in order to preserve the integrity and authenticity of her voice.
“When I read the first couple of chapters of Victoria Amelina’s manuscript in late 2023, the words ‘Orwell Prize’ popped up in my mind,” academic Sasha Dovzhyk, who was part of the editorial team, told the Kyiv Independent. “Victoria’s gift for drawing parallels between past and present, her political vision, and her drive in the pursuit of justice were conveyed in lucid and elegant prose, much in the spirit of George Orwell.”
“And then this polished text fell apart, disassembled into notes and unfinished chapters, which in themselves have become a testimony of Russia’s war crimes and its attempts to erase Ukrainian culture.”
“Looking at Women, Looking at War” explores both the resilience and adversity faced by Ukrainian women during the war, including figures such as human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk and artist Liubov Panchenko.
“I see the tremendous efforts you and your colleagues make to give justice a chance,” Amelina writes Matviichuk, as she details in the book.
“Yet despite all our efforts, we still might lose. And if we lose, I want at least to tell the story of our pursuit of justice.”
Alongside these accounts, the book also traces Amelina’s personal journey into investigating war crimes, highlighting the emotional toll of juggling such harrowing work with motherhood.
Previous winners of the Orwell Prize in the political writing category include American journalist Joshua Yaffa’s book “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia” in 2021 and “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by American journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in 2019.
Amelina is the first Ukrainian writer to receive the prize.
Amelina was among Ukraine’s most prolific young authors, having transitioned from a career in IT to full-time writing in 2015. Before the full-scale invasion, she actively published fiction, poetry, and children’s literature.
Her debut novel, “The Fall Syndrome” (2015), centers on the events of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, also known as the EuroMaidan.
Her 2017 novel, “Dom’s Dream Kingdom,” explores the life of a Soviet colonel’s family living in 1990s Lviv in the childhood apartment once lived in by Polish-Jewish writer Stanislaw Lem.
Her work has also been translated into a number of languages, including English, Polish, Italian, Spanish, German, Croatian, Dutch, Czech, and Hungarian.
Note from the author:
Hi there, it’s Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading my latest artice. I was overcome with such strong emotions when I learned that Victoria Amelina won this prestigious literary prize. She was my friend, and I can’t help but think not only of the time we spent together but of the loss of a great literary voice that Russia stole from this world. Please read her book, and don’t let her work ever be forgotten. Also, if you like reading about this sort of thing, please consider supporting us and becoming a member of the Kyiv Independent today.
The Kyiv IndependentKate Tsurkan