When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov was forced to flee his hometown of Kyiv. This journal is a harrowing record of the months leading up to and after the invasion, as Kurkov and his family migrate to western Ukraine for shelter. Surrounded by others fleeing violence, he pens incisive dispatches on the latest border conflicts and bombardments, and the shifts and schisms inside Ukrainian social and political life. These wartime entries ruminate on Ukraine’s historic past and possibilities for its future.