Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture
2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller 2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller

Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture

In this book, Janusz Bugajski argues that the Russian Federation is not a stable successor to the Soviet Union but a failed state confronting profound structural and political decay. After three decades of failed efforts to transform Russia into a nation-state, a civic polity, or a sustainable empire, the federation remains built on fragile historical foundations and lacks a shared national identity capable of uniting its population. Instead, Russia is defined by deep internal conflict—between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals, and federalists—alongside growing tensions between Moscow and the country’s regions and ethnic republics.

Read More
On Freedom
2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller 2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller

On Freedom

In his book On Freedom, Timothy Snyder examines one of the most invoked yet least understood ideals of modern political life. While freedom is often celebrated as a defining feature of democratic societies, Snyder asks a more fundamental question: what does it truly mean to be free, and how can freedom be sustained in an increasingly complex and fragile world?

Read More
State of War 
2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller 2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller

State of War 

This anthology brings together 35 powerful texts by some of Ukraine’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, offering an unflinching account of the first year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Through essays, reflections, and personal testimonies, the contributors confront the brutality of war with honesty and moral clarity, preserving the lived experiences of those who witnessed its earliest and most devastating stages. The collection affirms the enduring power of truth and memory, ensuring that the realities of this war are neither forgotten nor diminished over time. It speaks not only to the tragedy of conflict, but also to the painful necessity of resistance in defence of home, dignity, and freedom.

Read More
Ukrainian Sunrise
2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller 2025, Translated Book Awards andrew waller

Ukrainian Sunrise

In Ukrainian Sunrise, Kateryna Zarembo offers a nuanced and deeply researched portrait of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk before Russia’s 2014 invasion. Based on extensive fieldwork, repeated journeys, and interviews with local residents, the book challenges simplified and often distorted narratives that have long dominated media and political discourse. Zarembo reveals a region far more complex, diverse, and rooted in Ukrainian civic and cultural life than commonly portrayed.

Read More
Aftershock
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Aftershock

Author: Matthew Green
Translator: Iryna Reformator

Aftershock follows the journey of veterans as they return from the battlefield into civilian life, exploring the hidden wounds of war—psychological trauma, moral injury, and the struggle to heal. Green presents vivid narratives of ex-servicemen and women whose return is marked by anguish, guilt, and dislocation, set against the broader evolution of military psychiatry from “shell shock” to modern PTSD. Through rigorous research and empathetic storytelling, Aftershock asks what it means “to survive peace” and calls for a more compassionate response to the long, often invisible cost of war.

Read More
Butterflies Under Glass
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Butterflies Under Glass

Author: Iryna Vilde
Translator: Ali Kinsella

Butterflies Under Glass by Iryna Vilde is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story set in a diverse Ukraine on the brink of change. With warmth and psychological depth, Vilde follows a young girl’s journey toward self-understanding amid friendship, pain, and hope. Her prose recalls the emotional intensity of Elena Ferrante, yet it remains distinctly Ukrainian in its vision of independence and resilience. Long cherished at home, Butterflies Under Glass now reaches English readers as a rediscovered classic of world literature.

Read More
Furious Harvests
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Furious Harvests

Author: Alex Averbuch
Translators: Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky

This volume presents the first standalone English translations of a selection of poems by Alex Averbuch, drawn from his acclaimed collection The Jewish King (Kyiv, 2021), which was shortlisted for Ukraine’s Shevchenko National Prize. Averbuch’s work examines the region’s layered history—war, occupation, oppression, displacement—through the lens of personal and family stories. Many poems are rooted in archival “found texts”: letters from Ostarbeiters and Holocaust survivors, preserved in their original dialect and orthographic irregularities, creating a powerful, haunting “poetry of memory.” The volume’s final cycle confronts the current Russo-Ukrainian war, especially in Averbuch’s native Luhansk region, bearing witness to destruction, displacement, and resilience in the present day.

Read More
Naissances du totalitarisme
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Naissances du totalitarisme

Author: Philippe de Lara
Translator: Dmytro Karatieiv

Naissances du totalitarisme by Philippe de Lara offers a profound exploration of the origins and evolution of totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Through an analysis of communist, fascist, and Nazi revolutions, de Lara reveals how political violence and systems of control take root and sustain themselves. His study sheds light on the mechanisms of fear, propaganda, and conformity that enable such regimes to flourish—and ultimately collapse.

For Ukraine, a nation that endured Soviet totalitarianism and now faces renewed authoritarian aggression, this book carries urgent relevance. It serves as both a historical reflection and a warning, deepening understanding of how democracy can be defended against its most dangerous enemies. 

Read More
Petrichor: The Scent of the Earth After Rain
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Petrichor: The Scent of the Earth After Rain

Author: Philippe de Lara
Translator: Dmytro Karatieiv

Naissances du totalitarisme by Philippe de Lara offers a profound exploration of the origins and evolution of totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Through an analysis of communist, fascist, and Nazi revolutions, de Lara reveals how political violence and systems of control take root and sustain themselves. His study sheds light on the mechanisms of fear, propaganda, and conformity that enable such regimes to flourish—and ultimately collapse.

For Ukraine, a nation that endured Soviet totalitarianism and now faces renewed authoritarian aggression, this book carries urgent relevance. It serves as both a historical reflection and a warning, deepening understanding of how democracy can be defended against its most dangerous enemies. 

Read More
Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising

Author: Amelia M. Glaser 
Translator: Iaroslava Strikha

Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising explores the life and legacy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossack leader whose 1648 revolt against foreign rule helped shape the Ukrainian nation. Remembered as both a founder and a controversial figure, Khmelnytsky’s image has been reinterpreted for centuries across Ukrainian and Russian narratives. This collection brings together leading scholars to examine how his story has been used to define national identity and political legitimacy—and how those interpretations still resonate amid Russia’s war against Ukraine. Featuring essays by George Grabowicz, Frank Sysyn, Adam Teller, and others, Stories of Khmelnytsky invites readers to view history as a space for reflection, dialogue, and renewed understanding.

Read More
The Ladder
2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller 2025, Translation-in-Progress Grant andrew waller

The Ladder

Author: Eugenia Kuznetsova
Translators: Alina Senchenko, Donato Mancini

The Ladder by Eugenia Kuznetsova is a moving novel about a Ukrainian family suddenly displaced by Russia’s invasion. Just as the main character buys his dream home in Spain to escape his family, he finds himself hosting them—along with their friends and pets—after the war forces them to flee. In this tender, often humorous, story, Kuznetsova explores how love, tension, and resilience intertwine under the strain of exile and uncertainty. Drawing from her own experience as a refugee living in Spain, she captures both the absurdity and the heartbreak of displacement. Written in clear, compassionate prose, The Ladder offers a deeply human glimpse into the cost of war and the endurance of family ties.

Read More
Killer in the Kremlin
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

Killer in the Kremlin

John Sweeney — Author
Transworld — Publisher

A gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe.

In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine.

Read More
Деокупація. Історії опору українців. 2022 [De-occupation. Stories of Ukrainian resistance 2022]
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

Деокупація. Історії опору українців. 2022 [De-occupation. Stories of Ukrainian resistance 2022]

Bogdan Logvynenko — Author
Ukraїner — Publisher

The importance and timeliness of this book lie in the opportunity to give a voice to the people who survived the Russian occupation. In the foreword, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk writes, “It often lacks resonance against the backdrop of statements by politicians who suggest handing over the occupied territories to the aggressor country and satisfying its imperial appetites. The voice of the survivors makes such appeals immoral.”

Read More
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence

Yaroslav Trofimov — Author
Penguin Adult (publisher) / Penguin Press (imprint) — Publisher

A revelatory eyewitness account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heroism of the Ukrainian people in their resistance by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Ukrainian chief foreign-affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. Putin had intended to conquer and annex Ukraine with a vicious blitzkrieg, redrawing the map of Europe in a few short weeks with seismic geopolitical consequences. But in the face of this existential threat, the Ukrainian people fought back, turning what looked like certain defeat into a great moral victory, even as the territorial battle continues to seesaw to this day. This is the story of the epic bravery of the Ukrainian people—people Trofimov knows very well.

Read More
Бахмут [Bakhmut]
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

Бахмут [Bakhmut]

Author — Myroslav Laiuk
Ukraїner publishing house — Publisher

During the most intense fighting for Bakhmut in the winter and in March 2023, the author spent days and nights with Ukrainian infantrymen and artillerymen, medics and chaplains, rescuers and children who remained in the city and its surroundings, where artillery shelling and street battles were a constant. It’s a story about the anti-aircraft gunner who has just shot down a Russian fighter jet, father and sons fighting side by side, and a member of Wagner who cherishes Nabokov. It’s a journey to places where dogs feast on the dead, where you are petrified by fear and desolation but also stunned with courage, resilience and even love.

Read More
WAR AND PUNISHMENT: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

WAR AND PUNISHMENT: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Mikhail Zygar — Author
SIMON & SCHUSTER (Scribner imprint) — Publisher

From one of Russia's smartest and best-sourced young journalists comes the first work by a Russian author that reveals his country's history of oppressing Ukraine, blames Russian culture for the war, and dismantles the imperial narrative that Putin used to justify a brutal invasion.

Read More
Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival
2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller 2024, literary prize finalist andrew waller

Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival

Stanislav Aseyev — Luke Harding
Faber & Faber — Publisher

The first book of reportage from the front line of the Ukraine war. This is a powerful and moving first draft of history written by the award-winning Guardian journalist and #1 New York Times selling author of Collusion and Shadow State who forecast Putin’s dark adventurist ambitions.

Read More
The Torture Camp on Paradise Street
2023, Translated Book Awards andrew waller 2023, Translated Book Awards andrew waller

The Torture Camp on Paradise Street

Stanislav Aseyev – Author
Zenia Tompkins, Nina Murray – Translators

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute - Publisher

“In recognition of this personal memoir that not only testifies to the human rights violations committed by the Russian Federation, but also exposes the truth behind the existence of unofficial prisons, illegal deprivation of liberty, and torture carried out by the occupier in the city of Donetsk”

Read More
The Voices of Babyn Yar
Translated Book Awards, 2023 andrew waller Translated Book Awards, 2023 andrew waller

The Voices of Babyn Yar

Marianna Kiyanovska – Author
Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky – Translators

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute – Publisher

“In recognition of its masterful use of poetry to convey the unspeakable crimes committed at Babyn Yar, using a first-person perspective of Jewish voices to raise painful questions related to memory and responsibility.”

Read More