Maria Galina

Vozle Voiny

Near the War Notes. Mikhail Greenberg. Jerusalem 2023. 237 pages

Awards:

2025 shortlist DAR prize

These diary-like notes are not about the war, but about the new everyday life that was caused and created by the war. First and foremost, it is the record of a rift that quickly widens into an abyss, between the author and the Russians, between Odesa and Russianness. For Odesa, as for the whole of Ukraine, the last few decades have been a time of searching for a new identity. Just like for the author, who was born in Odesa, who lived in Moscow for thirty years and was integrated into the literary scene there, only to move back to her hometown in 2021, before the war began.

The author remembers the former Odesa as „nervous, ambitious, provincial and witty“, with painful memories of the „great cultural past“, with a cult of the „South Russian school“ (Babel, Olesha, Ilf and Petrov) and jovial humor. It was a brand aimed at export, especially to Russia.
In the decades of independence, a new Odessa has emerged – very European, like Lviv and London at the same time. A city with cozy wine shops, jazz concerts, well-groomed poodles and women walking along the beach with a cockatoo on their shoulders. A little run down, but democratic in a European way, unlike snob- bish Moscow.
Now a third Odessa is emerging, shedding its „image of a warm, relaxed city“ and turning into a „huge sea outpost“ whose face will be shaped not only by artists and musicians, but also by marines.

These painful descriptions of metamorphoses from Russian to Ukrainian, from life in Moscow to Odesa, from old to new communities, are autobiographically rooted. This book is not about the aggressors or the chaos they cause. It is about an author‘s return to her city, not about who is right and who is wrong. The fact that Odysseus has reached Ithaca again is good news in itself.