Diaries of war : two visual accounts from Ukraine and Russia

Title:

Author:

Krug, Nora, author, illustrator.

ISBN:

9781984862440

9781984862433

Personal Author:

Krug, Nora, author, illustrator.

Edition:

First Edition.

Physical Description:

127 pages : chiefly color illustrations, color maps ; 26 cm

General Note:

"Portions of this book were serialized in the Los Angeles Times between February 2022 and February 2023"--Colophon.

Source of cataloging data: WCP

Abstract:

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.

Immediately after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug reached out to two anonymous subjects--"K.," a 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 contrasting viewpoints from opposing sides of 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 death of those close to her, the disconnection from her family and friends, and 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 details his disdain for his government's murderous actions and 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 perspective that is necessary in challenging readers to confront the political actions of their own countries. Krug approaches Diaries of War with the immense skill and thoughtfulness required to document these two complicated experiences for the purpose of encouraging critical thinking

Contents:

Winter-Spring -- Spring-Summer -- Summer-Fall -- Fall-Winter.

Subject Term:

Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 2022 -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Letter writing -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Journalists -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Artists -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Aurora Downtown	Graphic Novel	DK508.850 .K75 2023	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

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 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 contrasting viewpoints from opposing sides of 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, and 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 details his disdain for his government's murderous actions and 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 perspective that is necessary in challenging readers to confront the political actions of their own countries. Krug approaches Diaries of War with the immense skill and thoughtfulness required to document these two complicated experiences for the purpose of encouraging critical thinking.

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.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Side-by-side first-person narratives--one Ukrainian, one Russian--depict in heartbreaking detail the devastation of the war in Ukraine in this visceral work of graphic journalism from National Book Critics Circle Award winner Krug (Belonging). The narrative is structured as a dual week-by-week diary, both visually polished and emotionally raw. K is a Russian-born Ukrainian reporter who divides her time between the front lines and Copenhagen, where she sends her kids to live with her mother. D is a Russian artist who "fell in love with freedom" as a teenager during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He hates the war and what Russia has become. Throughout, Krug juxtaposes everyday images in revealing ways: kids in the background are still kids--D's play Mario as K's play Minecraft. But K and her circle fight for their lives ("My goal is to survive, to help other people survive this war and to preserve our common heritage"), whereas D's immigration attempts are at first philosophically driven, then grow in urgency after the Russian government institutes a military draft: "I'm ready to go to prison if that's the price I have to pay," D says. Krug's drawings favor close-ups: hands holding dirt with a small plant sprouting, half-faces singing (or boycotting) the Russian national anthem. This powerfully conveys the chaos that war wreaks on civilians. (Oct.)

Kirkus Review

Having explored her German family's part in World War II, Krug now turns to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022, Krug turned to two acquaintances, a Ukrainian journalist and an artist from St. Petersburg, and asked about their feelings. From their answers, set in two columns, she developed this 52-week illustrated narrative. Both respondents, "K." and "D.," greeted the first moments of war with shock. K. took her children from Kyiv to the relative safety of Lviv, while D. discussed emigrating with his wife and children. "It's impossible to breathe freely here," he says. "You live with the fear that they might come for you." As time passed, D. documented the increasing repression that accompanied the demand that Russian citizens support Putin's war; meanwhile, K. chronicled the increasing resolve of her compatriots to resist. "I saw the photographs of the massacres in Bucha and Irpin," she notes. "The only thought I have in my mind is that I don't know how to live in a world where something like this happens." Krug's thought experiment might have been more meaningful had the two respondents not been so like-minded: Both decry the war and oppose Putin while insisting on Ukraine's sovereignty, and both liken Russia's invasion to that of Nazi Germany 80 years earlier. D., visiting neighboring Latvia, was surprised to discover that many Russians in that country supported the war, but he notes that they were in the minority overall, even as, back at home, "the place where Russian culture is most actively canceled is Russia itself." Both of them hope for peace, but, as K. writes, realistically, "The animosity between Ukrainians and Russians will remain for years, decades even." A necessarily sorrowful but insightful view of a war whose horrors are ongoing. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.