Long-list, 2025 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing

Editors Choice, New York Times Book Review

"Devastating...not to be missed."
―Publishers Weekly (Starred)

"Amelina's powerful pen documents Putin's savage attack on Ukrainian innocents. Her courageous work in eastern Ukraine stands in direct contrast to Trump and Putin...Amelina's work of principle and courage must override the din of capitulation emanating from the White House."
--Bob Kustra, Chicago Tribune

"Amelina's absence may be felt on every page... It slows you down. It transmits a powerful sense of chaos. It compels attentiveness, as the TV news does not.How to process such things? ...As the months roll on, it's sometimes hard to feel anything at all. Her colleague Oleksandra Matviichuk tells her that when this happens, she should find a pot of face cream and rub it into her cheeks: its coldness, softness and scent will bring her back to life, she'll find. And it's true. After a day of heavy bombardments in Kyiv...Amelina tries it for herself, and it works. Such details doubtless won't be found in any of the bigger, more complete books that will one day be written about the war in Ukraine, but to me they are of inestimable worth: not fiction but written, nevertheless, with the fine sensibility of a novelist."
--The Guardian

"Sharp, clear and unflinching...Reading this book is not only a literary experience but an act of defiance. Amelina was killed searching for the truth. She wanted the world to look. That's what we must do: keep looking, keep speaking, keep remembering."
--Irish Independent

"Amelina has an impressive eye for detail and an incredible capacity to lyrically capture an image and imbue the smallest moments with humanity....Gorgeously rendered."
--Kirkus (Starred)

"Makes you want to weep, because what the pages of Looking at Women Looking at War instantly make clear is just how much Amelina had to offer...[An] anguished attempt to answer the question: when your country is facing an existential threat, what role can the creative artist play?"
--Financial Times

"The proofs of [Amelina's] talent are clear as she gives us not only a view on life and death in wartime Ukraine and the courage, loyalty and dedication of its citizens but also flashes of unforgettable imagery and a perspective that is uniquely her own.... The voice we hear is hers. Irreplaceable. Unforgettable."
--The Dublin Review of Books

"Urgent, gut-wrenching and up close and personal."
--Lee Woodruff, Bookmarks

"Incredible...still fragmentary and electric feeling."
--Elif Batuman, "The Elif Life"

"Amelina's creative genius--seeing the beauty of the ordinary in her beloved Ukraine--comes through."
--Nadya Williams, Law and Liberty

"Rare, powerful and affecting, a work of principle and courage by a truly brilliant and inspiring writer."
--Philippe Sands, author of East West Street, Professor of Laws, University College London

"Rarely ever have I read anything this mature about a war that is taking place right now. Reading Amelina's book feels like a lightning illuminating your heart"
--Sofi Oksanen, award winning author of Purge

"This book would always have been important evidence that the Ukraine people were suffering criminal attack. Written by a poet, it is also a work of literature, published after the author lost her life doing her research. It is an icon of a young woman's heroism."
--Philippa Gregory

"Through investigation, interviews, and descriptions, Victoria Amelina's book offers a vivid and harrowing vision of the war in Ukraine. The talent and courage of this young poet and novelist transform this interrupted diary into a vital document for contemporary history."
--Pascal Bruckner

"Amelina's book shows the inside of the modern war. It is not always about heroic combat with a blazing gun, but sometimes about deleting your family photos and hiding professional awards in sand for your cat's toilet, so that you wouldn't be tortured and killed by enemy soldiers. The war in Victoria's book feels too real and routine in a way that makes it impossible to ignore it, to pretend it has nothing to do with you."
--Katia Sinchenko, filmmaker and war documentarian

Praise for Victoria Amelina

"Victoria's moral clarity, determination, and love of country impressed me greatly. She now joins the ranks of those whose lives have been cut short by war, their truncated careers the source of what-if musings forever afterward. In Victoria's case, I feel certain that her legacy, and her words, will endure, infusing a contemporary, combustive element to the Ukrainians' growing sense of identity and nationhood."
--Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker

"Victoria Amelina had a way of walking straight into your heart and making herself at home there."
--Lia Mills, The Dublin Review of Books

"What impressed me was [Amelia's] seeming ability to gaze steadily into the abyss and not fall into despair, perhaps because she possessed a marvelous sense of humor."
--Christopher Merrill, author of Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars

"Amelina touched so many of us with her profound capacity for empathy and observation... For its great courage and significance, her difficult work in this realm brings to my mind the acts of resistance figures like Jan Karski and Witold Pilecki, who similarly took great risks to collect and convey information about Nazi German crimes to the Western Allies during the Second World War."
--Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate

"Victoria has completed her worldly task, leaving us the legacy of her example: of grace under pressure, as Hemingway defined courage, and of the abiding importance of her mission."
--Askold Melnyczuk, award-winning author of The Man Who Would Not Bow

"[Victoria] has taught me that being a writer extends well beyond one's ability to craft words and sentences, that sometimes it involves risking your life to make sure someone else's story doesn't go undocumented, speaking out even when it feels like fewer and fewer people are listening."
--Yevheniya Dubrova

"A great and very brave colleague."
--Héctor Abad Faciolince, Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor