From Thursday, August 27 onward, each day dissolves into one long, endless chorus of air-raid alarms.
Thirteen alarms per day, lasting 872 minutes.
The next day—twelve alarms, lasting 634 minutes.
The following day—ten alarms, continuing for 644 minutes.
And so the pattern continues daily.
Russia keeps dispatching drone after drone, forging an uninterrupted line of threats. Explosions reverberate around the clock, becoming an ever-present feature of life.
It seems as though bursts of life are trying to pierce that pervasive gloom with their light.
And in a single night the losses surpass a year’s worth of sales.
The city is brought to a standstill.
When air-raid alerts sound, state institutions shut down. Shopping centers and grocery stores close their doors.
No documents can be obtained from state offices. No appointments at public clinics.
Children miss the class deadline after the all-clear, only to sprint back to shelter as soon as a new alarm erupts.
Meanwhile, in broad daylight, a Russian drone strikes a university in central Kyiv. One hundred sixty students reach the shelter in time, and casualties are avoided.
The magnitude of this paralyzing tragedy is almost beyond comprehension.
Russia is setting fire to warehouses around Kyiv.
Food is targeted. Building materials. Electronics. Children’s toys. Shoes. Humanitarian aid.
One report I heard today concerns works by a contemporary Ukrainian artist bound for Paris for his first solo exhibit. When a postal facility was hit, roughly a third of the entire show was destroyed.
Throughout August, warehouses that housed books for Ukrainian publishers also came under Russian assault.
The Russians destroy more than 12 million Ukrainian books.
For comparison, Ukraine publishes an estimated 26-30 million copies of books each year.
But the most troubling part is that the full consequences of these attacks will only reveal themselves with time.
A good friend of mine sold his debut novel to a publisher. The first book in a fantasy trilogy that was due to appear in the next two or three months.
Everything seemed to be proceeding normally: the writer grumbling about editor’s revisions, ordering the cover typography, and planning book launches.
And then a Russian missile struck, destroying 400 thousand copies belonging to his prospective publisher.
And in a single night the losses rival a year’s worth of sales.
The next morning, my friend understands that to endure, publishers will need to print only titles they know are guaranteed sellers. It becomes difficult to gamble on an unknown debut author.
At some point, the body grows tired of feeling constantly under threat.
A few days later, my friend receives an email. The publisher apologizes and says that his book will likely have to be moved to next spring.
My friend asks: what else can he do? He says he must write the second book and trust that it will reach its readers.
The ruined logistics centers held books from dozens of publishers—large, small, and niche.
Some publishers lost about 80 percent of all their stock.
Or consider a publisher of translated comics. Expensive, specialized, and difficult to produce. I never managed to order the few volumes I had been eyeing for months. Now 300 thousand copies have been destroyed—simply everything they had produced over many years.
Clearly, when survival becomes the primary concern, everything returns to the basics.
What can be sold. What is straightforward and uncomplicated.
Fewer debuts by relatively unknown authors. Fewer experiments. Less translated niche literature.
Another repercussion of the book burnings is that Ukrainian writers are left without their published work. For example, a successful Ukrainian author saw print runs for five of her books wiped out in a Russian strike.
All five titles were printed by the same publisher. Wiped out in a single night.
If we stop treating books as divine inspiration and start viewing them as products that generate royalties, then in circumstances like these a writer simply loses a source of income.
And if the royalties you counted on disappear, you must earn that money elsewhere. Rather than continuing with your next manuscript.
And this is another rupture in the logistics chain. Perhaps not as dramatic as a missing bottle of laundry detergent or a desperately needed medicine, but the chain remains fragile and it breaks all too easily.
Our sense of hearing grows sharper. As if there were a constant, acute point at the back of the skull dedicated to listening. These days, it feels as though we have become characters in a horror film, where survival hinges on how finely we can hear.
We listen intently to the day. We watch the flashes in the night sky.
And when we hear the bursts of air-defense fire, we thank those who defend our skies.
A friend tells me he finally went to see Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey with his wife.
I ask, “And how was it?” intending to know if the film pleased him.
But he replies—three air-raid alarms during the screening, and after each moment of relief, the story is reset by ten minutes.
For a viewer, The Odyssey between sirens becomes a journey in itself.
At some point, the body tires of constant danger. Night falls. Outside the window, the familiar Shahed drone blasts are joined by the rumble of missiles.
Books unwritten. Lives unwritten.
Explosion after explosion. Explosion after explosion.
Yet it turns out that sleep deprivation and exhaustion are stronger than the instinct for self-preservation.
Normality, too, shifts once more.
Now living in a constant state of alert becomes the norm, rather than a temporary respite from danger.
This is how Kharkiv endures.
This is how Kherson endures.
This is how Zaporizhzhia endures.
This is how Chernihiv endures.
This is how Sumy endures.
And when Western colleagues ask again—what do literature and writing signify in times of war?—I answer:
Writers, translators, and publishers slaughtered by the Russians.
Writers, translators, and publishers deployed in military service.
Millions of books burned by the Russians. Dozens of publishing houses reduced to rubble.
Books unwritten. Lives unwritten.
And 33 letters of the Ukrainian alphabet, which I lift from the ashes anew, sweep away grit and glass, and arrange them in a fresh sequence.
A dark cloud of smog hangs over the city. A dry cough scours my throat. Time to seek shelter.
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“Writing in Times of War,” by Oleksandr Mykhed. Translated by Yulia Tomchuk. Mykhed’s event is available to watch at hayfestival.com/anytime
