Odnes můj žal – Gordějevová Katěrina (2023)

Russian independent journalist and war reporter captures the fates of people heavily affected by the war in Ukraine in a collection of literary reports titled Take My Grief Away. The chosen format of interviews, whether conducted directly or remotely through communication technologies, adds immediate impact to her testimony. The author introduces readers to a wide spectrum of human types, situations, and dilemmas, bringing various refugee stories literally within reach. She records dreams, imagines, articulates unspoken sentences, questions, answers, or mere sighs. Twenty-four episodes, symbolically chosen to match the fateful February date of the Russian invasion, begin at the Russian-Estonian border and arc back there, while guiding the reader through various locations – from Berlin to Wrocław to Moscow – with Brno and the Husa na provázku theater being the closest to the Czech audience. The final chapter is conceived by the native of Rostov-on-Don as a personal confession. The book in its Russian original is yet to be published, with translations into several other languages being prepared concurrently.