Bakhmut

Translation of the book "Bakhmut", which combines literary reports about the everyday lives of military and civilian people in Bakhmut and its surroundings with essays about memory and oblivion, about the continuity of historical traumas and Russian cruelty against Ukrainians.

Bakhmut is one of the hottest spots on the map, which foreign media wrote about, covering the Russian war against Ukraine. During the most intense fighting for this city in the Donetsk region in winter and March 2023, Myroslav Layuk, a writer and war documentarian, and Danylo Pavlov, a photodocumentarian, spent days and nights with Ukrainian infantrymen and artillerymen, medics and chaplains, rescuers and children, both in the settlement itself and on its outskirts. The life, thoughts, and values ​​of the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine during a full-scale war - this is what the book "Bakhmut" tells about.

The publication consists of two parts: the first is literary reports about the everyday life of military and civilians in Bakhmut and its surroundings, and the second is essays, reflections on the events described in the first. On the pages of the book, Myroslav Layuk talks about the Ukrainianness of the East and the historical continuity of Russian crimes against Ukrainians.

“Bakhmut” received the Yuri Shevelev Prize (2024) and was shortlisted for the BBC Book of the Year (2024) and the Peterson Literary Prize (2024).