Yulia Iliukha and Olia Hercules

Ukrainian poet, novelist and journalist Yuli Iliukha and Ukrainian cookery writer Olia Hercules discuss their books about the realities of life in their country, one a novel about women confronted by the brutalities of war and the other a moving memoir of a family over four generations.

Iliukha is a winner of the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary Prize. She has been a volunteer during the Russia-Ukraine war, including assembling, with a friend, more than 500 individual tactical medical kits for Ukrainian soldiers. Her novel My Women is a series of vignettes featuring women who have been silenced, lost loved ones, fought and persevered, or broken down. They all evoke life in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. The novel won BBC Book of the Year in 2024 and has been published in the US, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria and Italy.

Hercules is a bestselling Ukrainian cookery writer. She raised £130,000 in two days when war first broke out and has also raised more than £1 million with the Cook for Ukraine movement. Her latest book, Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story, Interrupted, is the story of her family, which extends from the years of Russification, through the deportation of Olia’s grandmother under Stalin, to the flight of her parents from their town as it was occupied by the Russians in 2022. It is a story of how the human spirit can endure grief, exile, betrayal and war when it is born from a land with strong roots.