Victoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East" (Daunt Books, 2025)

Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is

a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk

regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region

as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria

Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale

invasion. Seen through a deeply empathetic lens of conversations with

local curators, historians, museum workers, and artists, the region is

shown in its complexity, with the uniqueness of its landscapes,

endangered biodiversity, entangled colonialisms of its past and a

threatened future.

Since start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in

2014, its eastern region—Donbas—has been synonymous with conflict. With