Language of War

When everyday life becomes a state of emergency, how can yesterday’s words suffice?

‘We were so happy and didn’t know it…’

A thirty-three-year-old writer lives in a quiet European suburb with his wife and his dog. His parents have bought an apartment nearby. On weekends they go out for brunch, cook and see friends. Life is good; it is normal. Then the invaders come.

The Language of War is about what happens when your world changes overnight. When you wake up to the sound of helicopters and the smell of gunpowder. When your home is hit by shells or broken into by gunmen, and you spend another night in a basement-turned-bomb shelter. When, even though you’ve never held a weapon before, you realise the only choice is to fight back. It is about things one can never forget, or forgive.

Bringing together Oleksandr Mykhed’s vivid day-by-day chronicles of the invasion of Ukraine with a chorus of other voices – his family, friends in exile, those who have fought and have witnessed unimaginable atrocities – this book is both a record, and a reckoning. Haunting and timeless, it asks how it is possible to find the words to describe a new reality; how you can still make sense of the world when the only language you can speak is the language of war.

Reviews

In this vital work, Mykhed takes on the challenge of finding a language to convey the horror and absurdity of war, and succeeds with devastating impact. One cannot ever truly capture the reality and enormity of war, but can only document fragments of events and snapshots of people’s lives. Mykhed skilfully collates these fragments - recollections, anecdotes, portraits and conversations, interspersed with a catalogue of war crimes - into a uniquely powerful account of what has happened to our country and our people since February 2022. Both deeply personal and of universal and lasting significance, this book should be required reading for humankind