Ukrainian Vignettes: Essays on a Culture at War

In this evocative account, Velikonja (The Chosen Few), a Slovenian cultural studies scholar who has served as a visiting professor in Ukraine several times since the 2022 Russian invasion, provides snapshots of everyday life in the country while analyzing the protest art and rhetoric that has emerged in response to the war. “Not for a moment do I imagine encapsulating it in all its immensely complex and painful reality,” he writes. “These are more its fragments, chips that rolled toward me as much as I rolled toward them.” Some of the vignettes and photographs are especially resonant and eye-opening, including an exploration of how patriotic imagery has worked its way into the design of packaged foods, and a graffito of a fierce but adorable kitten getting ready for combat. Velikonja also reflects on how the war has shaped spoken language in Ukraine, including the ongoing minimization of the Russian language, which he relates to similarly heated linguistic politics in Slovenia. Velikonja manages to address some of the nuances of the conflict without straying from an overall condemnation of Russia (“There is no excuse for a full military attack”). With an eye for poignant detail and an urgent sense of the larger historical questions at hand, this makes for an immersive and unpredictable examination of war’s reverberations throughout society. (Aug.)