Two books cover the Russia-Ukraine war from opposite perspectives

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, two nonfiction books explore the Russian invasion of Ukraine from two completely different experiences. First, 12-year-old Yeva Skalietska from Kharkiv reads one of her diary entries from the early days of the war to Here and Now's Deepa Fernandes. Then, former White House Russia expert Andrew Weiss speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about his new graphic novel biography of Vladimir Putin (illustrated by Brian "Box" Brown) – and why the Russian leader built a nefarious political image for himself that may not be entirely factual.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaung. I think it's sometimes easy to forget that the Russia-Ukraine war is still ongoing. After, what, months? And I don't mean that in a shamy finger-wagging way, it's completely natural for it to fade from front page news every day, and we've got stuff
0:21.6	going on in this country, and you've probably got your own personal things to deal with.
0:26.3	You know, I get it. But the war is still going on, and we've got two kind of wildly different
0:32.3	perspectives on it on the pod today. In a bit, we've got a look at Vladimir Putin's rise to
0:37.1	power in the form of a
0:38.8	graphic novel. But first, you don't know what war is, is a book written by a 12-year-old girl
0:44.4	from Ukraine named Yeva Skaliyatka, and it's adapted from dire entries that she's been keeping
0:50.7	since the beginning of the war. This interview with NPR's Deepa Fernandez gets kind of heavy as she talks about the
0:57.6	friend she's left behind, her old home that got destroyed, and how she knows there isn't
1:02.9	a future for her there anymore.
1:05.0	A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story, but right now, you probably need more. On Up First from NPR,
1:13.4	we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one's
1:20.0	story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning.
1:25.6	Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR.
1:29.7	More than 7 million refugees have been recorded across Europe as a result of the war in
1:35.5	Ukraine. And the lead refugee agency for the United Nations say is two-thirds of those who've
1:41.3	left Ukraine are children. We don't often hear their stories,
1:45.1	and so we want to bring you one now. Yeva Skalyetska is 12 years old. She wrote about her experiences
1:52.0	in the new book, You Don't Know What War is, the Diary of a Young Girl from Ukraine.
1:58.1	Yeva, welcome. Thank you. Yeva, you know, the title of your book is,
2:04.5	you don't know what war is. And Yeva, it made me realize, I don't. Maybe you can read a
2:12.6	little to us so that we do get a sense of what war is actually like.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.