This is a gorgeous and tender graphic novel of the realities of living through a war. There are conflicted parties on both sides of divide and this graphic novel showed that with humanity.

"Diaries of War" by Nora Krug is a powerful and visually stunning graphic novel that offers a unique perspective on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Krug skillfully weaves together two distinct visual accounts, providing readers with a deeply immersive experience.

The graphic novel format adds an extra layer of emotion to the narratives, allowing readers to connect with the personal stories of those affected by the war. Krug's artistry is both evocative and poignant, capturing the raw emotions and struggles of the individuals involved.

What sets "Diaries of War" apart is its ability to humanize the larger geopolitical conflict. By focusing on individual diaries, Krug brings a personal touch to the narrative, making the impact of war tangible and relatable. The juxtaposition of Ukrainian and Russian perspectives adds complexity, fostering a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted nature of the conflict.

Overall, "Diaries of War" is a captivating and thought-provoking read. Krug's talent for storytelling through visuals makes this graphic novel a compelling and accessible way to engage with the history of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. It's a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the human experience amid the complexities of war.

I read this weeks ago thanks to Net Galley, because I had read Nora Krug’s Belonging, a graphic memoir examining her own family's involvement in the atrocities of Nazi Germany. I thought it was well done, a brave exploration, and honest. I had also read her illustration work in an edition of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. So we all need to know more about the Ukraine invasion, something I just know Krug is opposed to. She’s anti-dictator, anti-tyranny, and seeks to understand.

Krug knew two people she relied on to get perspective on the war, a Ukrainian and a Russian, both friends, as she wanted to get a couple different perspectives on everything. I get that. She didn’t want to shut down her Russian friend’s perspective; she didn’t want to judge, regardless of whether she agreed or not. The point was to listen, to try to understand, which was a move consistent with her work on her family. When you are in a divisive situation, as we are in in this country, it is hard to listen, but she does.

My reading of the book without really delving into other reviews was that the Russian didn’t quite seem to get the implications of their passivity. It felt like they were more irritated and annoyed than condemnatory. I know that Putin can jail detractors from his policy, but then don’t speak if you can’t be honest, and if you are Krug, make clear the difference between passive disagreement with his country’s policies and a condemnation of Russian policies.

So I wasn’t even going to review this book as I began to see the scathing reviews on Goodreads, principally from Ukrainians. I finished the book, but felt it was sort of tepid. Then I decided to read the reviews, and found that Krug’s informants were actually K, a Russian-born journalist now with Ukrainian citizenship and D, a Russian. Two Russians, neither of them very harsh about one of the greatest injustices of our time. The Russian/Ukrainian journalist had even published pro-Russian articles.

I still wasn’t going to review this book, but I have recently read (Sardinian) Igort’s online comics journalism, How War Begins (or Journal of an Invasion) (to be published in March 2024), informed by his many years of in-person research including his Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks (2010), all far superior work to Krug’s, of much greater depth, and one that clearly names the perpetrators as wrong.

Then I pulled out my copies of Ilya Kaminsky’s amazing poetry Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic, after also reading Canadian Michael Cherkas’s story of Stalin’s “terror famine” in 1930’s Ukraine, Red Harvest. Al lsuperior work.

I am sure this book was conceived with the best of intentions, but seems to me ill-conceived and ill-advised. The invasion there needs the perspectives of Ukrainians who are suffering, period. It doesn’t need a “point-counterpoint,” let’s-look-at-all-sides-of-this-issue approach. The future of the planet is at stake. Tyranny and dictatorships from Hitler and Stalin through Putin need to hear from the victims so we can act on their behalf.

It's a painful read in some ways; after all it is two diaries of war. But it's an important read and gives the reader a view of the war that feels very real and up close. It may be too soon... but I'm glad we have this book because one can hope that knowing war up close like this will keep future generations from waging war.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's an important one and I hope it is widely read.

"Diaries of War" by Nora Krug is a seemingly well intentioned book that completely fails to grasp the realities of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its genocidal assault on the country's people.

The book juxtaposes the experiences of a Russian artist, "D" with those of an alleged Ukrainian journalist "K".
The problematic nature of this juxtaposition has been completely missed by Krug so I will spell it out here. D, although in disagreement with his government's policies does nothing to oppose them. D is primarily concerned about leaving Russia permanently and actually spends much of the book abroad while trying to avoid military service and find a solution that will allow him to escape Russia once and for all. In contrast,
K is living through an invasion while surviving bombings and reporting on conditions from the front.

An additional problem for this book is posed by K herself . Protesters of this book have identified as a former Russian citizen who wrote articles claiming that Ukraine was controlled by fascists. I spent a very limited amount of time researching this and was able to confirm that K only became a Ukrainian citizen in the last few years. I would hope that the publisher would have researched her previous articles, but I have not found any evidence that this was done.

In light of the above it is not surprising that there is currently a boycott campaign against this book on Goodreads and the average star rating is one. Additionally, I seem to be the only reviewer willing to touch this steaming pile of hivno on NetGalley. I have only written this review since I committed to do so. To be frank it never occurred to me that an imprint of Ten Speed Press or an acclaimed artist such as Nora Krug would be so negligent as to produce such a book. I am deeply perturbed that the publisher, Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press would bring this work to market. I expected much more from an imprint of Ten Speed Press and I will not review books from this imprint in the future.

Finally, I do not, in general, insert personal details into reviews. However in this case it makes sense to to do so. Although I do not have roots in the region covered by this book I do understand the languages and I have a deep familiarity with the history of the region. I seems fairly obvious that the people involved with bringing this book to market do not have this background. I would strongly suggest that they actually engage someone who does prior to covering this region again.

A heartbreaking account from two citizens of countries locked in a war that has a devastating affect on their lives and their families.

In 2018, Krug published "Belonging", a graphic memoir examining her own family's involvement in Nazi Germany. It's a fascinating work, and a relatively unusual one because people don't usually want to examine their loved ones' involvement in atrocities. So when I saw that Krug was coming out with a work about the war in Ukraine, I was immediately intrigued.

In "Diaries of War", Krug illustrates the accounts of two people, one living in Ukraine and working as a reporter and one living in Russia and working as an artist, after Russia waged war on Ukraine in 2022. I'll note (because it's hard to miss the controversy) that I'm not familiar with either contributor outside what's in this book, and also that the only introduction in the ARC I read was by Krug herself; it's not clear to me whether the final book will have a foreword (with or without controversy) by another writer.

As a visual experience, the book is tidily put together—one contributor's words on one side of the page, the other's on the other; Krug's drawings sprinkled throughout—though I found myself skimming right past many of the drawings, which break up the text but don't seem to add that much on their own. (I realized only after the fact that some of her illustrations are her interpretations of photos that have been in the news, and I badly wish that there were citations at a minimum.)

But...although I am sure this book was conceived with the best of intentions, there may be an element of "act in haste, repent at leisure". As far as I can tell from Krug's introduction, the contributors were chosen because they were some of the only people Krug knew in Ukraine and Russia at the time. Although it's interesting to see some variation in perspectives (K., a Russian-born journalist now with Ukrainian citizenship; D., a Russian who passively opposes the war), I struggle to imagine that these would have been the sole two voices represented had they been chosen intentionally rather than out of convenience.

This would have been a stronger project if Krug had not relied on (presumably) her only two contacts in Ukraine and Russia and had instead solicited contributions from more people with more varied backgrounds and reactions—born-and-raised Ukrainians; someone in Russia who does more than shrug off his own total inertia by saying "This war has also shown me that you cannot influence your government in any way. It's terrible, but it's a fact" (123); someone in the Ukrainian army; hell, someone who is or has been in the Russian army. I suspect that choosing only two people Krug was friendly with made her less inclined to interrogate their analyses and/or (in)actions in the way that she was willing to interrogate her own family history in "Belonging", but showcasing more perspectives also would have made it easier to bluntly say, in the main text as well as in the introduction, "Here is why these perspectives cannot be taken as perfect/representative viewpoints and here is why I have included them among others". It might have been easier for her to ask K. to talk about how much she's had to learn and unlearn, as someone who grew up under Russian propaganda, and to contrast with someone who has grown up with a perspective of Russia as an aggressor. She could have juxtaposed D.'s refusal to speak at an event in Paris because "I was worried I'd have to share my opinions on the war in public on that stage" (111) with someone living in Russia who has spoken out and faced consequences—both because D.'s story is not inspiring, and because it would ask the reader to ask themselves, "What are or are not the consequences of *you* speaking out? Would you?" (K. could conceivably be that juxtaposed Russian voice, were the book structured differently, but the book is working too hard to make her the Ukraine-side voice of the project to allow for that.)

Because I am not from either Ukraine or Russia, I lack the cultural context that Ukrainians will have when reading this. When I recontextualize it by thinking about wars waged by the US, I can understand D.'s passivity as something akin to Americans I know who don't even vote(!) because politics and war seem so distant from their own lives. Yes, include those voices, because people will recognize themselves and you can talk about the dangers of complacency and inertia. But at the same time, if I were putting together a book from the perspectives of (say) someone from the US and someone from Iraq during the US invasion and war in Iraq (feel free to substitute any US-led conflict; there are plenty), I can't imagine choosing, as the sole US voice, someone whose perspective boiled down to "Oh, yeah, it's terrible...I think about moving to Canada all the time. But I sponsored a kid from Iran to go to school once, so I've done everything I can."

Again, I am sure the intentions here were good. I understand that parts of this were originally serialized in a paper, but I wish that when discussions were undertaken to turn this into a book some different decisions had been made.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Nora Krug's work explores the individual experience in systems of forced or coerced complicity, mining her own family history for Beloning: A German Reckons With History and Home or how to fight or challenge tyranny in her adaptation of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. In Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine, Krug serves as the medium for two anonymous individuals caught up in the complexities of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Krug begins with an explanation of how the project was created and first published, serialized in several news publications. This introduction also details why the subjects have been anonymized, and that the experiences were formed into a narrative by Krug with K and D having full textual approval. Following the explanation of process, Krug presents a condensed history of the development of Ukraine as a nation and the challenges of having Russia as a neighbor, with their tied past as Soviet states. Page 10 specifically address Krug's authorial concerns of how to address a Russian perspective, but decided that "As a German, I believe that we have to correct our mistakes of the past." Continuing to discuss her outsider status, but that democracies and pacifism are merely ideas that need support, resources and military to continue to exist, especially when challenged by tyrannical regimes. (Page 10).

Divided into four chapters themed by seasons, each page pair alternates between K, a female journalist based in Kyiv, and D, a male artist from St. Petersburg who is opposition to the war. Each page is centered on one or more images derived from some idea, event or action in that page's narrative. The narratives are shown in handwritten text over notecard like boxes. Both K and D have families and children and their weekly diaries serve to show the struggle to balance traditional day to day family life when so much time and psychological energy is locked up in survival in nations at war. K's pages are hued in oranges and yellows. Much of her experiences reflect the fear of death of her or her acquaintances, life in the Ukraine, her children's' lives in Denmark and the daily struggle of having shelter, heat and food. D's pages are in greens and blues. He does not support the war and much of his entries discuss trying to find things his family was used to buying in a sanctioned Russia, his opposition to the war and the Putin government, and the efforts to get his family out of Russia and settles somewhere else in Europe.

Both of our narrators struggle with loneliness and forced separation. Of their personal experiences caught up in the wider historic events. They both offer perspectives on the war, K more patriotic and committed to doing what she can to spread word and assist those in need. D struggles with how to live up to his ideals and opposition without risking harm to his family. Many of his entries contrast his adult experiences against his youthful memories of the Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. They are both have the financial privileges to be able to leave their nations, but both talk about those in their lives for whom that is not a possibility.

It is a powerful work that provides two human stories of the Russo-Ukrainian War, that challenge us to consider and confront our own roles and capabilities in the face of challenge. As Krug wrote in the introduction, she is quite clearly an outsider, and they and we will never be able to fully grasp the narrator's experiences. But history often overlooks the common person in search of the over arching historical narratives of key figures or timeline of events.

K and D's lives are narratives are "ambiguous, complex and sometimes contradictory... But it is ambivalent narratives that force us to critically confront our own passivity..." (pg. 11). There is always a choice to be passive or resist, and certainly that means a sacrifice might be necessary, but isn't it better to chose than to be carried along?

I received a free digital version of this eBook via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

**Disclaimer: I recieved a free eARC of this through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this opportunity.  I picked this up becuase I had autoapproval through NetGalley.  I found it interesting to see the different perspectives , but I admittedly don't know very much about the war.  I noted as I perused Goodreads that the ratings were turned off and many people didn't like the premise.  I can understand their perspective from the feedback they gave, and therefore will not rate it.  However, I did like the art and the way the story was structured.

As a Russian-born expat struggling to understand current events in Ukraine, it is difficult to give feedback on this title. I normally review books on the basis of - did I like them? Reading through this book, I could not say that I liked it. It reopened wounds that time had barely begun to heal made me relive that oppressive trauma of the early days of war, before war began to feel "normal" and we had all found ways to cope.

I do wish that the narrative gave more of a rounded view of what it might be like to live on both sides. Both narrators are quite privileged and I had difficulty recognizing my friends and family on different sides of the conflict within these individuals who can choose to leave the conflict whenever they wish. Most Ukrainians and Russians do not have this privilege of mobility. I wanted to hear the voices of people who were actually stuck within the conflict with no way out.

That being said, this story is an important one. I know it received a lot of criticism, but I found it to be an interesting description of what different perspectives may look like. Even if we, as readers, disagree with certain points, it is important to understand what those points may be.