A Russian journalist’s first-hand account of the heartbreak and resilience of ordinary Ukrainians faced with Putin’s aggression

Unique among books about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Displaced tells the stories of ordinary and extraordinary civilians whose lives have been upended in the conflict. Russian dissident and journalist Valery Panyushkin gives readers an immersive and humanizing account of what it means to wake up one day and find yourself a refugee, or to feel compelled to devote your life to helping refugees.

Panyushkin’s achievement in this singular book is the proximity he creates between his readers and his subjects. All the small annoyances, the major catastrophes, the special occasions, quiet rewards, challenges, joys, and triumphs that constitute a life—how do these play out when you have been forced to leave your home with only a few possessions and no guarantee you’ll ever be back? What does it mean to be HIV positive, to have a toothache that needs attention, to be midway through gender reassignment therapy, to be pregnant, seeking an abortion, out of work, close to retirement, suffering from addiction, caring for a neighbor’s pets, when you are a refugee? How do you keep up the insurance payments, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, conclude a business deal, stay healthy, find a purpose? Above all, Panyushkin asks, how long will it be before all of us—even those who today feel most shielded from such a fate—know the answers to these questions from direct experience of forced displacement?

In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, Panyushkin brings us directly into the daily lives of people who have been forcibly displaced by war. Ultimately a hopeful book in its appeal to compassion, its portrayal of resilience, and its focus on our shared humanity, Displaced is an unforgettable account of the dramatic effects of Russia’s war.

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