My Women
My Women is a stunning and rare novel comprising of a series of searing vignettes about women confronted by the countless brutalities of war. It locates the voices and devastating experiences of those who have been silenced, those who have lost loved ones, those who have fought and persevered, and those who have broken down.
With an original style and with poetic repetition, the nameless protagonists, ‘My Women’, bring succinct and emotionally charged stories that evoke life during war in Ukraine with an intensity that is excruciatingly difficult yet deeply moving.
My Women won the BBC Book of the Year 2024 in Ukraine and was shortlisted for EBRD Literature Prize 2025. The book has been published in the US, France, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Greece, Lithuania and Italy, with translations forthcoming in Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain and Finland.
‘Here is a book that makes music of conscience, that finds rhythm in a time of fear, that offers language in a silence after air raids and builds a raft of words to try to sail out of the bombed-out city.’ – Ilya Kaminsky
‘A strikingly multi-faceted and intimate portrait of the experience of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.’ – Ainsley Morse
Yuliia Iliukha is a poet, prose writer and journalist, born 1982 in Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine. She is the author of several books for adults and children. Her poems and prose stories have been translated into over fifteen languages.
Iliukha has received awards including the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary prize, the Smoloskyp Prize, Rotahorn-Literaturpreis and the BBC Book of the Year. Yuliia is currently working on a novel.
