AROUND THE WAR IN TWENTY STORIES: Ukrainian Tales of Hope, Humanity and Humour

Anna Shevchenko

RIGHTS SOLD: Ukrainian

RIGHTS AVAILABLE: All other rights handled by The bks Agency

These stories are beautifully written and give a stunning and poignant sense of the state of play’.

Alec Russell, Foreign Editor, Financial Times

All the stories in the book are based on the author’s family and friends. Ranging from profoundly moving to darkly funny and downright surreal, these true tales of Ukrainian life in the time of war will leave no one indifferent.

 Around the War was published as a charity project to coincide with the second anniversary of the beginning of the war.

Anna Shevchenko is a British-Ukrainian writer and a compulsive storyteller. One of her stories, ‘Bequest’, made it to a novel, which was nominated for a George Orwell Prize in the UK, selected in the top forty summer reads list in the Independent and shortlisted for two prizes at the European Literature Salon in France. Her novel ‘The Game’ was a Book of the Month in France, the choice of Belgian booksellers as a Book of the Year and was one of the top five Foreign Books of the Year in Ukraine. Anna is also the author of Culture Smart! Ukraine, a guide to Ukrainian culture, currently on its second edition. Her articles have appeared in various publications, including The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph. She collected the stories for this book working across Europe and in Ukraine in 2022-23. For the last 30 years, Anna has been working as an interpreter for world leaders’ meetings ( EU, NATO, G7 summits ) including Number 10 as well as a UK Stabilisation Unit expert in conflict across the world. She speaks 8 languages fluently and is currently learning Greek.