Publication Date: November 17, 2026
Travels in Ukraine During the War
A powerful, offbeat narrative of encounters with ordinary Ukrainians living through war.
In the tradition of Anna Funder’s Stasiland, No One Talks About the War is built on everyday conversations between the author and the people she meets. It is written from an extraordinary place at a crucial inflection point: Ukraine in the midst of a protracted fight for its very existence. These conversations are woven together as a journey across Ukraine, from the western regions, where relative peace hangs in the air, to the front lines, where life is measured in days and hours. Through these raw encounters, the book explores themes of language, history, and the steadfast commitment of a people facing an uncertain future.
“Nina Kossman’s fascinating travelogue is a choir of voices: kind, angry, contradictory, accusatory, or caring–voices of humanity that cannot be silenced even by death and destruction unleashed by Russia on Ukraine.”
––Zinovy Zinik, author, BBC contributor, TLS critic
“In No One Talks about the War, Nina Kossman travels across Ukraine, from border towns in the West to the front lines in the East, talking to locals, both civilians and soldiers. The author’s voice, fearless and genuine, elicits illuminating views from the Ukrainians she meets, who attempt to confront thorny questions of how to shape their future, how to survive the present, and what they owe to the past. No One Talks about the War presents readers with portraits of ordinary people trying to live normal lives under the extraordinary circumstances of a brutal war. Unique and riveting.”
––Elena Gorokhova, author of “A Train to Moscow”
“Reminiscent at times of Voltaire’s Candide, Nina Kossman’s remarkable new book presents war not as a heroic spectacle but as a lived reality, shaped by misunderstandings, contradictions, and sometimes confusing human encounters. Most striking is the narrator’s unforced sincerity: through a series of poignant vignettes, the book becomes not only a journey through a wartime Ukraine but an unexpectedly revealing meditation on identity, perception, and the difficulty of truly understanding others.”
––Maxim Matusevich, author of “Six Trains of No Return”
“As I turned the pages and encountered small snippets of a life centered in a conflict zone, I could not help but feel the gravity of life. There were encounters that made me gasp just the same as there were ones that made me sit in silence and ponder what had just happened. … Overall, if you are looking for insight into the recent Ukrainian conflict and want to get that insight from someone outside of the mass market media, this will help.”
––Matthew Lloyd
