The Ukraine Shelf

OCT 15, 2025

War, Memory, and Shifting Borders with Oksana Maksymchuk and Philippe Sands

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).

61 MIN

AUG 12, 2025

The Ukraine Shelf Episode 5: Food with Olia Hercules and Felicity Spector

49 MIN

MAY 15, 2025

Writing War and Trauma with Yuliya Musakovska and Maria Tumarkin

How can we speak and write about war? What role does silence play in this process? What does it mean for people and places to survive war? We discussed these questions and more with two brilliant writers, Maria Tumarkin and Yuliya Musakovska, whose works have interrogated war and trauma in uncompromisingly honest and perceptive ways. This episode of The Ukraine Shelf was recorded in front of a live audience at Dim Zvuku in Lviv in collaboration with the INDEX Institute for Documentation and Exchange.Our guests: <ul><li>Yuliya Musakovska is a multi-award-winning poet and translator from Lviv. She has published six volumes of poetry in Ukrainian and has written for many magazines and journals in Ukraine and internationally. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Her first collection in English translation, The God of Freedom, was published in 2024 by Arrowsmith Press and translated by Olena Jennings with the author. You can read Yuliya’s poetry in English translation here, here, and here. </li><li>Maria Tumarkin is a Ukrainian-Jewish-Australian writer, essayist, and lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication at Melbourne University. She is originally from Kharkiv. Maria has written four books that blend essay, memoir, cultural history and philosophy, often focusing on the ways in which the past, as she puts it, ‘infiltrates’ the present. As well as books, she writes essays, reviews, and pieces for performance and radio.</li></ul>Books discussed: <ul><li>Maria Tumarkin, Axiomatic (Fitzcarraldo, 2018) and Traumascapes: The Power and Fate of Places Transformed by Tragedy (Melbourne University Press, 2005) </li><li>Yuliya Musakovska, The God of Freedom, transl. by Olena Jennings with Yuliya Musakovska (Arrowsmith, 2024) Recommendations </li><li>Artur Dron’, We Were Here, transl. Yuliya Musakovska (Jantar, 2024) </li><li>Elina Softić, Sarajevo Days, Sarajevo Nights, transl. Nina Conić (Ruminator, 1996) </li><li>Semezdin Mehmedinović, Sarajevo Blues, transl. Ammiel Alcalay (City Lights, 2021) </li><li>Miljenko Jergović, Sarajevo Marlboro, transl. Stela Tomassević (Archipelago, 2003)</li></ul>

64 MIN

MAY 9, 2025

Eastern Ukraine with Olena Stiazhkina and Victoria Donovan

54 MIN

MAY 9, 2025

Identity and Culture under Attack with Sasha Dovzhyk and Eugene Finkel

The Ukraine Shelf's second episode hosts Dr Sasha Dovzhyk and Eugene Finkel to discuss threats to Ukrainian culture and identity Russia has attempted to repress and destroy Ukrainian statehood and identity over two centuries. In this episode, we trace the historical roots of Russia’s current aggression to imperial myths from the early 19th century, and look at how these myths have resurfaced repeatedly over time. We explore the most recent wave of violence through the tragic story of Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer who was killed in a Russian missile attack in 2023. The books under discussion are Eugene Finkel’s Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two Hundred Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024) and Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women Looking at War (Harper Collins, 2025). Guests Dr Sasha Dovzhyk Dr Sasha Dovzhyk is a Ukrainian writer, editor, and cultural manager. She holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Birkbeck, and has taught at Birkbeck and UCL SSEES, worked as a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London, and edited three books. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guardian, European Voices, New Lines, Index on Censorship, CNN, and others. She edits the London Ukrainian Review. Having lived in London for nine years, she has recently moved back to Ukraine to help set up INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange. Eugene Finkel Eugene Finkel is the Kenneth H. Keller Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University. Finkel's most recent book is Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024). He is also the author of Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2017), and co-author of Reform and Rebellion in Weak States (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Bread and Autocracy: Food, Politics and Security in Putin’s Russia (Oxford University Press, 2023). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, and other journals. Finkel also published articles and op-eds in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Spectator and other outlets.

58 MIN

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