A BRIEF HISTORY OF A LONG WAR

Ukraine’s history of conflict with Russian invaders is explored with graphic specificity.

This graphic exploration of Ukraine’s conflict-defined history with Russia drops the reader right into the midst of the current war, during a bombing raid that sends the protagonist from her apartment into a community bomb shelter. Her conversations with neighbors in the shelter serve as an opportunity to highlight essential aspects of Ukrainian history. Before she even leaves her apartment, she reflects on the Holodomor, a nationwide famine that occurred because Russian occupiers withheld grain from the Ukrainian farmers who had produced it. Arriving in the shelter, she hears someone affectionately call a child a Cossack, which occasions a discursion on the history of these illustrious Ukrainian forces. Other shelter mates mention experiences and historical knowledge that spin off into explorations of the country’s millennium-deep roots in the Kyivan Rus, the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet, the suppression of the Ukrainian language, and a number of historic and modern conflicts with Russia. These interwoven moments capture the spirit of a “long war,” centuries of intermittent conflict that have most recently manifested in a full-scale invasion beginning in 2022. For readers who possess a grounded understanding of Ukrainians’ fight for sovereignty, the book paints a powerful picture of a country with a centuries-long mandate to defend and define itself. For those who have engaged only superficially with Eastern European history or contemporary politics, this deliberate but nonlinear history, which stops short of explicitly stating its goals, may leave them with more questions than comprehension. Orange, black-and-gray illustrations walk a fine line between emotional expressiveness and documentary directness, making them unsettling and occasionally lovely to look at.

An impassioned illumination of the historical precedents undergirding Ukraine’s national identity.