The Language of War by Oleksandr Mykhed review – ‘Eat, kill, grief, repeat’ reflections from Ukraine

A ferociously angry testimony from Ukraine on the impact of war, where even literature loses its power to console

Oleksandr Mykhed and his wife Olena lost their home when the Russians invaded Ukraine. Before February 2022 he had never held a gun in his hands. But a week before the invasion, fearing the worst, he trained with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. And after helping to make a bomb shelter out of a university library in Chernivtsi, he enlisted in the armed forces of Ukraine.

His book, much of it written during his 100 days in the barracks, is less a record of armed service than a reflection on the impact of war – how it has changed him and others, too, not least children. It’s a ferociously angry book, borne of “rage, love for homeland, revenge”. Where his compatriot Andrey Kurkov’s reports from Ukraine are nuanced and sometimes comic, Mykhed’s are bitter and indignant. “This is a book about things one can never forget. Or forgive,” he says, recalling the free and happy life he enjoyed before the Russian army and “a gigantic net of saboteurs” destroyed it.