Here are 100 books that Borderland fans have personally recommended if you like
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My passion for Ukraine and its incredible people began when I managed a European Union aid programme there in the 1990s. Ukraine had just become an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and we were supporting its path to democracy. I travelled throughout this stunning country umpteen times and met thousands of warm, welcoming people, who quickly found their way into my heart. The Road to Donetsk is my tribute to Ukraine. It won the 2016 People’s Book Prize for Fiction, an award I dedicated to the Ukrainian people. Today, my memories of all those I met weigh heavily on my mind.
I loved this beautifully written novel which embraces and honours the Ukrainian spirit. It is 1942 and the Germans have arrived in a small town in Western Ukraine. When the schoolmaster and his wife are rounded up and murdered along with all the other Jews, Yaisa, a local peasant girl, instinctively hides their two young sons away. The massacre is witnessed with horror both by a Ukrainian Auxiliary, now remorseful at having joined the German police, and by a German engineer who is building roads with forced Ukrainian labour. Now the hunt is on for the Jewish boys – and for Yaisa too. An incredibly moving read that both hones in on one small town and pans out across the vast and varied landscape of Ukraine.
Early on a grey November morning in 1941, only weeks after the German invasion, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Deft, spare and devastating, Rachel Seiffert's new novel tells of the three days that follow and the lives that are overturned in the process. Penned in with his fellow Jews, under threat of transportation, Ephraim anxiously awaits word of his two sons, missing since daybreak. Come in search of her lover, to fetch him home again, away from the invaders, Yasia must confront new and harsh truths about those closest to her. Here to avoid a war…
My passion for Ukraine and its incredible people began when I managed a European Union aid programme there in the 1990s. Ukraine had just become an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and we were supporting its path to democracy. I travelled throughout this stunning country umpteen times and met thousands of warm, welcoming people, who quickly found their way into my heart. The Road to Donetsk is my tribute to Ukraine. It won the 2016 People’s Book Prize for Fiction, an award I dedicated to the Ukrainian people. Today, my memories of all those I met weigh heavily on my mind.
I read this book as research for my own novel and found it an incredibly moving fictional account of one Jewish Ukrainian boy’s survival in WWII. Yarmeans ‘ravine’ and,in 1941, over the course of just two days, 33,000 Ukrainian Jews were lined up by German occupiers on the edge of Babi Yar outside Kyiv and machine-gunned, falling then into their mass grave. His whole family is murdered, but eighteen-year-old Solomon somehow survives this horror and escapes to the north of Kyiv, where he falls in with a group of Jewish partisans. Their mission is to destroy Nazis and to ensure the survival of Jews and Judaism. Hiding out in a dense forest, they subsist only with the selfless help of a non-Jewish Ukrainian couple and a Catholic priest.
I’ve spent the past few years writing about the 1940 Katyń Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war by Stalin’s NKVD and the decades-long cover-up of their crime. My research has taken me far and wide across the recent history of eastern Europe but until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 I was convinced the events I was studying belonged firmly in the past. Now, more than ever, we need to make an effort to understand the ways in which history informs the present. I most admire writers who combine a forensic attention to detail with a deep compassion for the individuals at the heart of every story.
Kurkov’s novel is about a middle-aged beekeeper who embarks on a Kafka-esque road trip across the conflict-ridden regions of eastern Ukraine to find pollen for his bees. This book provides a unique insight into the absurdity and tragedy of a conflict that pre-dates the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by 8 years, but has been largely ignored by the outside world.
With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine’s most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict.
Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
My passion for Ukraine and its incredible people began when I managed a European Union aid programme there in the 1990s. Ukraine had just become an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and we were supporting its path to democracy. I travelled throughout this stunning country umpteen times and met thousands of warm, welcoming people, who quickly found their way into my heart. The Road to Donetsk is my tribute to Ukraine. It won the 2016 People’s Book Prize for Fiction, an award I dedicated to the Ukrainian people. Today, my memories of all those I met weigh heavily on my mind.
For me, this engaging memoir of a Ukrainian who fought in WWII reads like a personal diary, such is the informality of Wenger’s skillful storytelling. In 1943, at the tender age of 20, he was forced from his village into the German Baudienst(building service). Conditions were miserable and when the Ukrainian Division was recruiting soldiers, he joined up, German uniform and all. Hunger, bitter cold, and flea-ridden beds were mild endurances compared to other horrors he experienced; early on, he was forced to witness a mass execution of Jews, later to join a firing squad against his friends. Wenger finally ended up in a British POW camp in Scotland, then married and settled in the UK. This incredible man turned 99 in February 2022, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine.
I am teacher of Russian History in the University of York and have been in both countries many times. Russia’s war against Ukraine is something that has touched me personally and professionally in the most profound way: witnessing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been heartbreaking. Understanding why that war happened and what its consequences will be is of vital importance for anyone interested in the modern world, in justice, and the future of Europe. These books offer clear, passionate, and compelling accounts of the war, explaining the historical background, the immediate causes, the principle actors, and the Russian way of waging of the war.
Andrew Wilson is the foremost British historian of Ukraine. This book offers the most authoritative and readable single-volume history of Ukraine available in English.
Given the astonishing lack of knowledge about Ukraine, particularly evident in so much ‘expert’ commentary on the war, Wilson’s work is required reading for anyone wanting to understand what is happening today in Ukraine. The fifth edition takes the story up to the outbreak of the war and into the summer of 2022.
The author concludes that Putin’s war to destroy Ukraine has paradoxically helped Ukraine to overcome its internal divisions and transform itself into a genuine nation-state, supported by all sections of the population.
As in many post-communist states, politics in Ukraine largely revolve around the issue of national identity. But in the case of a country which only became independent in 1991, the issue is particularly sensitive. Ukrainian nationalists see themselves as one of the world's oldest and most civilised peoples, 'elder brothers' indeed to the younger Russian culture. Yet Ukrainians often feel like a minority in their own country, where Russian is still the main language to be heard on the streets of the capital, Kiev. This book seeks to provide a comprehensive guide to modern Ukraine and to the versions of…
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in the History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah; history and culture of Ukraine; and Slavic-Jewish literary encounters.
This excellent collection of articles by the top connoisseurs of East European art and culture discusses how Ukrainians and Jews created new trends in art and literature in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil Kyiv, then short-lived capital of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and later of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This book proves that avant-garde images and trends emerge from the revolutionary utopianism and the desire to create a universalistic language understandable beyond the ethnic divide and languages.
The study of modernism has been largely focused on Western cultural centres such as Paris, Vienna, London, and New York. Extravagantly illustrated with over 300 photos and reproductions, Modernism in Kyiv demonstrates that the Ukrainian capital was a major centre of performing and visual arts as well as literary and cultural activity. While arguing that Kyiv's modernist impulse is most prominently displayed in the experimental work of Les Kurbas, one of the masters of the early Soviet stage, the contributors also examine the history of the city and the artistic production of diverse groups including Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, and Poles.…
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
My professional and personal interests in the Russian Empire began with a trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow I took as a college student in January 1992. The Soviet Union had officially collapsed the previous month: I was able to meet with ordinary citizens, hear their stories, and experience what the end of an empire looked like on the ground. I started to learn the Russian language–including one summer spent in Kazan, on the Volga River–and earned my doctorate in modern Russian History. My job as a history professor has allowed me to travel to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all helping me to understand the lingering effects of Russia’s imperial projects.
When it first appeared, I reviewed this book for The Moscow Timesand called it “the best account yet of the Soviet collapse.” Plokhy pays particular attention to how events in Ukraine during 1991 proved crucial to the final breakup of the USSR (“the last empire” of the title).
Moreover, Plokhy’s conclusions help to explain how the narratives about the collapse contributed to Russia’s aggression against its neighbor in the 2000s. Everything Plokhy writes is worth reading, including his Gates of Europe, Chernobyl, and The Russo-Ukrainian War (he is prolific), but The Last Empire’s details have remained with me: the fierce desire for independence Ukrainians expressed in 1991 has remained true ever since.
On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took centre stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades,with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world.As Prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire ,…
It was through learning Russian in my Swiss high school that I first got interested in the history of Eastern Europe. When I became fascinated by the theory of nationalism during my university studies, my geographical focus shifted to Ukraine, a society whose aspiration to nationhood has been repeatedly been contested by the neighboring great powers. For my first book, I researched the history of a fascinating nationally bifurcated family whose members have left archival traces from Moscow to Liubljana and from Kyiv to Stanford. I hold a BA degree from the University of Geneva, an MPhil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Basel.
Soviet rule completely changed the relationship between Russia as the imperial metropole and Ukraine as a peripheral territory in the empire.
It was through Terry Martin’s classic that I first understood the enormous political implications of the Soviets’ intricate nationality policy that invested the state’s various ethnic groups with their own national educational and administrative institutions, all the while depriving them of the right to political self-determination.
Martin’s analysis is as sharp as his prose is crisp and his detailed understanding of the Bolsheviks’ political reasoning remains impressive over twenty years after the study’s publication.
"Terry Martin looks at the nationalities policy of the early Soviet period and offers an insightful, detailed analysis of a problem that Soviet leaders grappled with throughout the twentieth century. As he points out, it was a problem that eventually helped to usher in the end of the USSR."
- Amanda Wood Aucoin, New Zealand Slavonic Journal
The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the…
I moved to Kyiv to report for The Independentin 1990 and fell in love with Ukraine. The beauty of Kyiv and its golden-domed cathedrals amazed me as did the vibrant culture of civic engagement that emerged. It’s not often that you witness a declaration of independence and see a new country appear on the world map. I admire the bravery of Ukrainians who have fought for both and value the warm friendships that I made. I was Ukraine’s first accredited foreign correspondent. Before that I reported for The Guardian (Budapest) and later, for the BBC (London and Kyiv). I live in Toronto and still closely follow developments in Ukraine.
What strikes me most about this book is how prescient it is. Published in 2000, this assessment of the first few years of Ukrainian independence accurately flags that Russia never fully accepted it and explains why an independent Ukraine threatens Russia. The introduction provides an excellent, brief history of Ukraine. Later chapters focus on politics, economics, social and cultural issues, and foreign policy up to 1998. Dyczok, an academic, was an eyewitness to key historical events, reporting from Ukraine during its 1991 declaration of independence and after. I particularly recommend the chapter on Ukrainian-Russian relations. Although written long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of Ukraine, much in that chapter foreshadows these critical events and helps account for why what happened did.
Ukraine has surprised many international observers. Few anticipated its declaration of independence in 1991 or its determination to move out of Russia's shadow. Dyczok redresses the continuing dearth of information on the country. Aimed at nonspecialists and specialists alike, it presents an overview of the main government policies, and the social and cultural issues facing the new state. These are placed within their historical, regional and global framework. In contrast with the generally bleak picture that international media reports present, the book suggests that Ukraine has actually accomplished a great deal in a short time. In seven years, from 1991…
I’m the author of multiple middle grade and YA historical novels, including Torch, which won the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. Torch takes place in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and it is especially timely in the face of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Bear (a popular symbol of the Russian Empire) has mauled many of its neighbors in the past century, not only Czechoslovakia and Ukraine but also the Baltic countries that, like Ukraine, were incorporated into the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European countries that were part of the Soviet bloc until the fall of Communism in 1989.
Dual timeline narratives connect young people’s lives today with those of family members in the past.
This one contrasts the fear and isolation Matthew feels during the 2020 Covid lockdown with the terror experienced by his great grandmother living in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine) during the Holodomor. The futile efforts of a relative who escaped to alert Americans to Soviet oppression and Ukrainians’ starvation raises important questions for budding journalists who seek to tell the truth in the face of pressure and propaganda.
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas, and his mum has moved his great-grandmother in with them to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.
But when Matthew finds a photo in his great-grandmother's belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will reveal a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh's latest novel sheds light on the Holodomor - the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians.
