!!! COMING OCTOBER 24, 2023 !!!
Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia
by Nora Krug
Ten Speed Graphic
Publication Date: September 2023
128 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1984862440
Penguin Random House
Published in the following countries: USA/Ten Speed Graphic, UK/Penguin Particular Books, Germany/Penguin Verlag, Italy/Einaudi Editore, France/Gallimard BD, Brazil/Companhia Das Letras, Spain/Salamandra, Korea/Ellelit Editors
Powerful graphic journalism that highlights the contrasting realities of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist grappling with their own individual experiences of Russia’s war on Ukraine – collected, edited, and illustrated by award-winning author Nora Krug.
Immediately after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug reached out to two anonymous subjects — “K.,” a Russia-born Ukrainian journalist, and “D.,” a Russian artist — and began what would become a year of correspondence. Based on her weekly interviews with K. and D., Krug created this collection of illustrated accounts that chronicles two viewpoints from opposite sides of the border throughout the first year in this ongoing war.
With millions displaced, injured or killed as a result of the invasion, Krug presents a look at the devastating effects on an everyday, individual level. K.’s diary documents a year of emotional and existential distress. She experiences loss in every sense of the word: the death of those close to her, the disconnection from her family and friends, the devastation of her country—but her account is also a story about bravery and survival in the face of dire uncertainty.
In juxtaposition, D.’s narrative expresses his disdain for his government’s brutal actions and details his attempts at emigrating his family abroad. He navigates his own struggle with cultural identity, guilt and lack of action in the face of a tyrannical regime—a necessary perspective that challenges readers to confront the political actions of their own countries.
Published as an Op-Comic series with the Los Angeles Times, with a portion of the entries unique to this book, Diaries of War is a harrowing real-time record of an international conflict that continues to devastate countless lives.
Honors:
“This book will definitely make you think. The geography of Russian aggression is much wider than you might at first imagine. Russian aggression is not only bombs, rockets and millions of refugees. It is also a boomerang that hits the aggressor country itself in the most unexpected way. Nora Krug’s dual visual-textual narrative can emotionally drain the reader, but the reader is unlikely to ever forget this book.” – Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees
“Growing up as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Hungary, being a victim of war was a fact of life. Diaries of War touches me very personally.” – Miriam Katin, author of We Are on Our Own, and Letting It Go
“Diaries of War is a magnificent feat of witness. Nora Krug’s illustrated weekly interviews with a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist are so much more raw and intimate than a conventional news account, conveying the texture of daily life in wartime as well as the smaller tragedies that often don’t make the headlines. Instead of watching from a serene distance, you’re engaging with K and D. Your guard is down. The anguish and shock has gotten in. Read this remarkable book and grant them that act of solidarity.” – Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and The Secret to Superhuman Strength
“Nora Krug does an extraordinary work combining painful and complex storytelling with an unusual grace and elegance. She manages to involve us in looking at history from an intimate and very human point of view. There is tact, decency and wonder in her books.” – Igort, author of The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks
“If we did not know it before, Covid-19 has taught us that headlines and op-eds are insufficient to convey the grinding reality of an ongoing traumatic event. While our mass media engages in a sustained effort to forget, Nora Krug here reminds us. Illustrated by Krug’s gem-like miniatures, these dual accounts from Ukraine and Russia, rooted on either side of that deadly border, each express their own sustained senses of horror and anxiety during the first year of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. Russian artist D’s total alienation from the shocking acts of his own government will resonate with Americans for whom the Trump administration was only the most recent and egregious example of same. And under any President, we should seek voices like that of Ukrainian journalist K — testimony of those who have suffered under our own government’s consistently violent foreign policy. May this book be a model for many others to follow.” – Bill Kartalopoulos, Comics scholar and editor
“As fascist imperialism—with Vladimir Putin as its rotting figurehead—commands attention on the world stage, those living underfoot must survive. Here are the personal accounts of two such survivors, living on either side of the Russo-Ukrainian War, illustrated with poetic grace by Nora Krug. A vital and empathetic document of human experience in terrible times.” – Jason Lutes, author of Berlin
You can buy the book here!
