Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nonfiction and autofiction have become, alongside poetry, the leading genres of contemporary Ukrainian literature. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, autobiographical approaches and autofiction help emphasize the immediacy of events, and, as some argue, refrain from compromising authenticity. Secondly, the autobiographical take allows the texts to appear fairly quickly. Fictionalization of reality would require longer periods of research and analysis. Writing has become a way of witnessing and documenting life in the times of war. The three authors discussed below, Artur Dron, Andriy Lyubka and Lena Lyagushonkova each find their unique style and depict a particular segment of life shaped, in one way or another, by the long-standing Russian aggression and colonial ambition.
What unites these authors is that they all position themselves as witnesses and give their autobiographically informed perspective. Artur Dron writes about the life of a soldier; Andriy Lyubka, who since the time of his book’s publication also joined the Armed Forces, describes various experiences of a volunteer helping the army and buying supplies, mostly vehicles; and Lena Lyagoshonkova, whose genre is the closest to fiction, focuses on a personal history, inseparable from the larger political context of the Ukrainian industrial east, Russification, totalitarianism, and the legacy of Soviet corruption, inevitably present in today’s Russia.
Andriy Lyubka’s book of short essays War From the Rear: A Ukrainian Aid Volunteer’s Story has been translated by Kate Tsurkan and is available in English from Academic Studies Press. Artur Dron’s book, Hemingway Knows Nothing, a collection of essays and personal accounts, is to be out shortly in the English translation from Jantar Publishers in the UK, whereas Lena Lyagushonkova’s autofiction belongs, perhaps, to the category of works that may be somewhat lost in translation: to immerse her readership in the authentic Luhansk of the 1990s and early 2000s, she coins a particular sociolect where alongside the literary Ukrainian she uses slang; a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian called surzhyk (linguistically speaking, a creole); and a fair amount of culture-specific obscenities that are nonetheless crucial to recreating the larger picture.
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When the full-scale invasion began, Artur Dron, a young poet in his early twenties, voluntarily joined the Armed Forces. His book is a visceral, gripping account of life at point zero, being wounded, and losing friends. The title that evokes Ernest Hemingway points at the polemical nature of some of the essays in the book. The writings of Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque have been long considered to be the gold standard of war and veteran literature. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the question that permeated literary discussions was as follows: “Who will be our Hemingway and write this war.”
For Ukrainians of today, war is neither an adventure nor a political game where they are someone’s pawns.
Dron argues that the wars these writers took part in were of a very different nature than the present war in Ukraine, and their epistemic landscape cannot serve as a blueprint in this case. For Hemingway, war was a foreign affair, an event he joined out of his need for a meaningful adventure. For Remarque, war was a forced affair thrust upon the new German generation by corrupt politicians.
For Ukrainians of today, war is neither an adventure nor a political game where they are someone’s pawns. It is a conscious choice to defend their land and lives, their political autonomy, and their beliefs. Dron shows that a Ukrainian soldier has agency and political will. The book became an instant success and won the Yury Shevelyov Prize for nonfiction from PEN Ukraine in 2025. In addition to its philosophical message, the collection features moving personal accounts of camaraderie, faith and religion, loss, and hope.
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Andriy Lyubka’s new book is about his experience as a volunteer. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, he and his team have been tirelessly fundraising, purchasing, and transporting used vehicles to the frontlines. The team have procured more than four hundred cars so far. Lyubka is talking about “the war from the rear,” not a soldier’s war, but that of volunteers and families of the defenders. The book features the road stories and short essays about the team’s experiences in wartime Ukraine.
Lyubka’s compelling storytelling technique is detailed, lyrical, at times, humorous, and therefore deeply penetrating. He talks about the smell of unexpectedly good coffee brewed at a random gas station in the Ukrainian east, but also about hope and heartbreak, about soldiers who lost their lives before the volunteers managed to bring them the vehicles they needed for evacuation, about regret, guilt, bad weather, hard work and complicated time management. This is an honest look into life in Ukraine during the last four years.
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Lena Lyagushonkova’s novel, A Cat Peed on My Flag («Мій прапор запісяв котик», Урбіно, 2025), is about growing up in Luhansk in the 1990s and early 2000s. Luhansk, this terra incognita of the independent Ukraine, is described in almost carnivalesque terms, but this is a carnival infused with absurdity and even cruelty. As the heroine herself states, to someone from western Europe or even from western Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk seem the same: they are just far away eastern cities, Russified, complicated, and incomprehensible.
In reality, they differ greatly: while Donetsk was the terrain of the oligarchs, “Rihanna’s concerts,” and, essentially, money, Luhansk was the land of miners, poverty, and thwarted ambition. Lyagushonkova coined a highly original language of self-description, using some code-switching into Russian, swear words, miners’ slang, and philosophical terms with equal ease.
Growing up female in a place that was shaped by Soviet policy of mixing of ethnicities, scarcity of material resources, and overall oppression, is a poignant focus that illuminates totalitarian epistemic violence that is always based on gender inequality. The book’s humor is sharp and merciless, akin to that of a standup comedy show, and yet the things described are far from funny.
It is seemingly not about the current war, but this impression is deceptive: Lyagushonkova simply offers a larger framework and gives an unflinchingly honest account of the industrial east that bore the brunt of Russian pre-war propaganda and, in part, corroborated Russian political mythology. This is very relevant to the war and our understanding of its roots. The critics already called the novel postcolonial and feminist. This year, it won the BBC Ukraine Book of the Year Award in fiction for 2025.
Autobiographical approaches in fiction and nonfiction appear in different ways in the works of the three writers discussed above. Artur Dron offers a conceptual take on what this war is, in its epistemic dimension. Andriy Lyubka focuses on detailing the everyday life in Ukraine and the volunteering movement, essential to the Ukrainian resistance. Lena Lyagushonkova presents the reader with a personal account of growing up in Luhansk, offering a better understanding of the Ukrainian industrial east, parts of which were annexed as early as 2014.