DONBAS AS A METAPHOR. KATYA YAKOVLENKO

The print run will be printed at the beginning of February 2026. All pre-orders will be shipped once we receive the copies.

In her new book, writer and visual culture researcher Kateryna Yakovlenko writes about cinema, artworks, literary works, images that unfold for the readers the metaphor of Donbas — a place that does not exist, but which is filled with names, birds, plants, ghosts of past and present events. Discussed by the author Donbas, is the landscape of Donetsk and Luhansk regions with its stories, with a language that sometimes manages to be heard, reconstructed, but sometimes  only stumbles upon traces of events and phenomena to which there is no longer access or access to which was always complicated.

Archives, artifacts, myths, earth and wind, the steppe, kurhany (burial mounds) and what is left of them form the author's specific perspective on the Ukrainian East. Kateryna Yakovlenko addresses interlocutors, many sources, but also gaps. This book has its own rhythm, in which scientific research moves together with literary writing and is attentive to the empty spaces that exist between them.

“Not to let the distance become even greater, to find words and images that can be operated with if not painlessly, then, at least, with dignity and warmth, not to let the land and people get lost – to be forgotten and rejected. Kateryna Yakovlenko takes on the difficult work of doing this. And she does it, making her way through personal experience, through the honesty of questions to which there are no answers yet, through the perspective of others — primarily visual — the perspective of strangers and their own others, who also tried to ask honest questions,” — Olena Stiazhkina, historian and writer.

“Born in Donbas, Kateryna Yakovlenko has written a beautiful, tender and profound analysis of a region of Ukraine, historically and politically complex. Donbas, in turn, metaphorically embodies the complexity of the history, culture, and politics of Ukraine. From the author's touching and sensitive reflections emerges an image of Donbas that is deeply human: traumatized yet resilient, nostalgic but with hope for a peaceful and prosperous future,” — Hiroaki Kuromiya, historian, Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The book is published with the support of INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Interaction, writer and Senior Lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne Maria Tumarkin, as well as the family of Victoria Amelina.

About the author

Kateryna Yakovlenko is a visual culture researcher, curator, and writer. She works with the theme of the influence of war, trauma, and loss on art and memory. She researches the history of contemporary art through the themes of the invisible, the body, and the place. Since 2023, she has held the position of Editor-in-Chief of the Suspilne Kultura website.

Team

Publisher: ist publishing
Author: Kateryna Yakovlenko
Design and layout: Katya Lesiv
Literary editing: Oleksandra Sauliak
Correction: Iryna Kurhanska
Managing Editor: Borys Filonenko
Copyright Management: Mariia Farbota, Mariia Sharova
Project Management: Borys Filonenko, Anastasiia Leonova, Kateryna Nosko