PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Sergey Maidukov is a Ukrainian writer who has sold tens of thousands of copies of his published books in the countries of the former USSR, such as Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the Baltics. Widely recognized in Western Europe for his intimate knowledge of the criminal world, he worked for 22 years as a commissioned writer for the largest publishing houses in Russia and Ukraine.
"Sergey Maidukov's book offers us a unique insight in the lives of a Ukrainian family, disrupted by Putin's war. Having already fled Donetsk in 2014, where his parents - staunch Putin supporters - still live, Maidukov flees with his wife, daughter, and grandchild to Poland. With his laptop, his ""most valuable possession"", he writes down the daily experiences of this odyssey: the money problems, the illnesses, the humiliations, the guilt feelings, but also the resilience and the hope for a better future. When, after six months, they decide to return to Kyiv, the situation is not better when the city becomes the target of Russian missile and drone attacks and the family tries to survive on the 22nd floor of an apartment building without electricity, water and heating. Maidukov wrote: ""I am this book."" Indeed, he has written a beautiful book on the inside of the war and what the war does to him and to other victims. --Marcel H. Van Herpen, author of ""Putin's Wars"""
