No One Talks About the War

No One Talks About the War

by Nina Kossman

Publisher
Open Ends Press
Publication
Oct 01, 2026
Format
Hardback
Illustrated
No
Price
$21.00
Dimensions
5.5 x 8.5 x 0.69 in
ISBN
979-8994032640
ASIN
B0H52VV47V
Pages
236
Age
Adult 18+
Category
Biographies & MemoirsTravel

Rights Sold

🌍 World Wide Rights Available

Description

For readers of Anna Reid's "Borderland" or Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun," a powerful, offbeat narrative of encounters with ordinary Ukrainians living through war.

"No One Talks About the War" is built on everyday conversations, mainly between the author and 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, exploring themes of language, history, and the steadfast commitment of a people facing an uncertain future.



Awards & Endorsements

Zinovy Zinik, author, BBC contributor, TLS critic

"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."

Maxim Matusevich, author, professor of history
"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."

Mathew Lloyd
"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."

Grants, awards, and fellowships.

Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing
Finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing (2021).

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Received an NEA fellowship (1999).

UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award
Received a (now-discontinued) UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award for non-native writers of English (London, 1995).

Foundation for Hellenic Culture
Received a grant for a book from the Foundation for Hellenic Culture (2000).

Onassis Foundation
Received a grant for a book from the Onassis Foundation.

Nina Kossman talks about her new and forthcoming books. Interviewed by David Serero.

Author(s)

Nina Kossman

Nina Kossman

Nina Kossman’s twelve books include four volumes of poetry, a memoir about her childhood in the former Soviet Union (life under Communism through a child's perspective), an anthology she edited for Oxford University Press, and several volumes of translations of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetry. Her work has appeared in over ninety magazines and anthologies and has been translated into twelve languages. Her plays have been produced internationally. A finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, she has received grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Foundation for Hellenic Culture, an NEA fellowship, and the now-defunct UNESCO/PEN Short Story Award for non-native writers of English (London). Born in the former Soviet Union, she lives in New York, where she edits EastWest Literary Forum, a bilingual literary journal (https://eastwestliteraryforum.com).

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