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“Ukrainian Lessons”: The Guardian’s Chief Culture Writer Explores Art, Life, and War in Ukraine
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![Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko]( "Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko")
The Guardian’s chief culture writer, Charlotte Higgins, is preparing to release a book titled Ukrainian Lessons, which explores art, life, and resistance in Ukraine during the war.
The announcement was published on the website of Penguin Random House.
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In the book, Higgins explores “the profound connections between war, art and life.”
The publisher describes the book as a powerful and timely work that examines what artists are willing to risk and why culture itself is worth defending.
“In a war fuelled by the attempted erasure of Ukrainian culture—one that has killed countless artists and created countless more—art has become a matter of life and death. In times of war, art and literature are where difficulty and complexity survive: where the most painful, unspeakable truths can still be faced,” the description reads.
The cover for Ukrainian Lessons was designed by Ukrainian artist Serhii Maidukov, bringing a Ukrainian visual voice.
“Charlotte Higgins wrote an important and obviously great book. will publish it this year a bit later. Thank you for choosing me for this work which I'm proud of,” Maidukov commented.
Ukrainian Lessons will be published in English on August 20, 2026.
Ukrainian literature has already received major recognition from the UK. The British edition of the BBC has named a book by the late Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina among its 40 most compelling reads recommended for 2025.
Amelina was killed on July 2, 2023, after sustaining critical injuries in a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk the previous month. Her book, War & Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, is scheduled for publication on February 18, 2025, by the US publishing house St. Martin’s Press.
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Additionally, in recent years international attention to Ukrainian literature has continued to grow. Alongside the recognition of Victoria Amelina’s work, The Washington Post has named Artem Chapay’s Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns among the best nonfiction books of 2025.
In its assessment, the newspaper describes the book as the account of a Ukrainian man and father who once identified as a pacifist but felt he could no longer remain on the sidelines after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The review highlights Chapay’s philosophical reflections on the destruction he witnessed and his portrayal of war as experienced by people “who weren’t born to be fighters.”
Earlier, Poems from a Firing Port, the only poetry collection by Ukrainian soldier Maksym Kryvtsov, who was killed in action, received Lithuania’s 15-minute Book of the Year literary award in the “Best Translated Poetry Book” category.
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-059d9558393be5215390797df620dd1d.png "A transport-launch container for the Ukrainian-made RK-3 “Corsar” missile held by the Alfa special unit of Belarus’s KGB. (Photo: BYPOL)")
