This tragically unfinished account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine bears witness to both grave crimes and the strength of the human spirit

It is expected that a book review will be written with some degree of critical distance, but, in this case, distance is not possible. On 27 June, 2023, Victoria Amelina, author of Looking at Women Looking at War, was in a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk when it was hit by a Russian missile. She died of her injuries a few days later, leaving the book she was working on unfinished. Shock and grief at her killing continues to reverberate among those close to her, and among her wider circle of friends, of whom I was one. She was 37 and the mother of a young son.

The full-scale Russian invasion transformed every aspect of Amelina’s life. At the beginning of the war she threw herself into humanitarian work, as refugees from the east and south arrived in her home city of Lviv. But she soon began to realise that she could do something bigger through writing.