How do we make sense of war, shifting borders, and forced displacement? How can we remember and speak about these things, and how can literature act as a witness, perhaps even bring a sense of justice? And what lessons can we draw from the tumultuous history of Ukraine and Europe to help us understand what is happening today? This special edition of the Ukraine Shelf podcast featuring poet Oksana Maksymchuk and international lawyer and author Philippe Sands was recorded live at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The episode is hosted by the podcast's creators Olesya Khromeychuk (author The Death of a Soldier Told By His Sister and director of the Ukraine Institute London) and literary translator and Ukraine scholar, Uilleam Blacker. Books discussed: Oksana Maksymchuk, Still City (Carcanet, 2025) Philippe Sands, East West Street (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2016) and 38 Londres Street (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2025) Guest recommendations: Natalia Vorozhbyt, Bad Roads, translated by Sasha Dugdale (Nick Hern Books, 2017) Józef Wittlin and Philippe Sands, City of Lions: A Portrait of a City in Two Acts: Lviv Then and Now (Pushkin Press, 2023) (Wittlin’s is essay translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones).

In this episode, we talk about one of the most fundamental things in all our lives: food. How can food help us understand culture, identity, and history? How does food bring people together in dark times? How has Ukraine’s status as a major global exporter of food been affected by the war? We discuss all these questions and more with two brilliant food writers - Olia Hercules and Felicity Spector.

Olia Hercules is a British-Ukrainian chef, author and cultural ambassador, she is the author of Mamushka: Recipes From Ukraine & Beyond; Kaukasis: The Cookbook – A Journey Through the Wild East; Summer Kitchens Inside Ukraine's Hidden Places of Cooking and Sanctuary; Home Food and most recently Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story of War, Exile and Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Felicity Spector is a journalist, author and baker. Her work in TV journalism has taken her all over the world, covering everything from the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia to the inauguration of Barack Obama in the US; most recently, she has been a tireless volunteer in some of Ukraine’s most war-torn regions. Her book about these experiences, Bread and War: A Ukrainian Story of Food, Bravery and Hope, was published in 2025 by Duckworth.

Book recommendations:

Olia Hercules:

Lesya Ukrainka, The Noblewoman, translation. Percival Cundy, in Spirit of Flame: A Collection of the Works of Lesya Ukrainka (Bookman Associates, 1950). Translation available online here.

Charlotte Shevchenko-Knight, Food for the Dead (Penguin, 2024)

Lina Kostenko’s poetry (See here for some translations by Uilleam Blacker at Words Without Borders)

Felicity Spector:

Oleksandr Mykhed, The Language of War translation. Maryna Gibson, Hanna Leliv and Abby Devar (Penguin, 2024)

Artur Dron, We Were Here, transl. Yuliya Musakovska (Jantar, 2024)

Victoria Belim, The Rooster House (Virago, 2023)

Also mentioned:

Lesya Ukrainka, Cassandra trans. Nina Murray (Harvard, 2024)

Oleksandr Mykhed, I Will Mix Your Blood with Coal transl. Tanya Savchynska and David Mossop (Northwestern University Press, 2025)

In this episode, we explore the industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. From 2014 until 2022, this was where Russia focused its war of aggression against Ukraine, killing and uprooting thousands of people. Russia claimed these regions were culturally and historically Russian, but history, and the people of these regions themselves, tell a different story: the majority consider themselves Ukrainian, and they overwhelmingly voted for Ukrainian independence in 1991. To get a better understanding of this region’s complex identities and its history as a resource-rich region on the edge of empire, we spoke to Professor Victoria Donovan of the University of St Andrews about her book Life in Spite of Everything (Daunt Books, 2025) and to historian and novelist Olena Stiazhkina about her novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die (Harvard, 2024). (hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674291645) Olena Stiazhkina (pen.org.ua/en/members/styazhkina-olena) is a historian and one of Ukraine’s most prominent prose writers. She is originally from Donetsk, where she lived until 2015, when she was forced to flee the Russian invasion. Her historical work has focused on the experience of everyday life in the Soviet Union and the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during World War II. She has written eleven books of prose, and currently has three books available in English: Zero Point Ukraine: Four Essays on World War II (Ibidem, 2021) (cup.columbia.edu/book/zero-point-ukraine/9783838215501/), Ukraine Love War: A Donetsk Diary, translated by Annie O. Fisher (Harvard, 2024) (hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674291690) and Cecil the Lion Had To Die, translated by Dominique Hoffman (Harvard, 2024). Victoria Donovan (st-andrews.ac.uk/modern-languages/people/russian/vsd2) is Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and the Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms at the University of St Andrews. Victoria’s research explores entangled colonialisms and industrial extraction with a focus on the Ukrainian East. She is the author of Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia 2019; a book co-authored with Darya Tsymbalyuk and others called Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2022) (research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/publications/limits-of-collaboration-art-ethics-and-donbas) and her most recent book is Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books, 2025). Books recommended in this episode:

• Victoria Amelina, Looking at Women Looking at War (Harper Collins, 2025)
• Volodymyr Kulikov, Iryna Sklokina (eds.), Pratsia, vysnazhennia ta uspikh: promyslovi monomista Donbasu (Centre for Urban History, L’viv, 2018)
• Yevgenia Belorusets, Lucky Breaks (Pushkin Press, 2022)
• Vitaly Matukhno, books produced by his “Gareleya Neotodryosh” project