books

The Death of a Soldier

The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (London: Monoray, 2022)

WITH A FOREWORD BY PHILIPPE SANDS

INTRODUCTION BY ANDREY KURKOV

1st September 2022 | Hardback | £12.99 ORDER

Including new material placing the book in the context of the ongoing war, and a new foreword by Philippe Sands.

'A remarkable, intimate memoir. . . Not history, but now. Not distant, but proximate. Not imaginary, but real.' Philippe Sands, bestselling author of East West Street and The Ratline

Killed in action as he served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Olesya Khromeychuk’s brother Volodya Pavliv died on the frontline in eastern Ukraine in 2017. As Olesya tries to come to terms with losing him, she also tries to process the Russian invasion of Ukraine: as an immigrant living far from the frontline, as a historian of war, and as a woman, a civilian, and a sister.

In this timely blend of memoir and essay, Olesya tells the story of her brother – the wiser older sibling, the artist and the soldier – and of his death. Deeply moving and thoughtful, it picks apart the ways political violence shapes everyone and everything it touches and depicts with extraordinary intimacy the singular and complicated bond between a brother and sister. Olesya’s vivid writing is a personal and powerful commitment to honesty in life, in death and in memory.

The Death of a Soldier in other languages

Undetermined Ukrainians

‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013).

'Khromeychuk argues for the need to contextualize the Division's past. She looks at history as something too complex to be boiled down to simplified causalities. The Division has to be understood within the various contexts in which it emerged and functioned. [...] Khromeychuk dances brilliantly in a minefield.'

Review by John-Paul Himka (University of Alberta) East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies Volume III, No. 1 (2016), pp. 179-181.

'Khromeychuk argues that the debate over 'collaboration' in Ukraine has created an "impoverished form of politics, representing historiography designed to either celebrate or condemn". [...] It is gratifying to see how these two authors [Khromeychuk and Statiev] have coaxed their histories out of the shallows of long-held assumptions and toward greater accuracy and complexity.'

Review by Kate Brown, Slavic Review 74, no. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 153-156.

'Khromeychuk provides a fascinating account of how post-war politics came to bear on the discussion of whether to transport the division from the prisoner-of-war camp in Italy to Great Britain, and then whether to give its members civilian status.

Review by Myroslav Shkandrij, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 58:4 (2016), 410-412.

Other reviews:

Christopher Gilley, 'Review of Olesya Khromeychuk, “Undetermined” Ukrainians. Post-war narratives of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division', Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 6 (2016).