My Ukraine

Interweaving facts from the past to understand the present and herself, Victoria Belim makes My Ukraine a testament to the power of love and hope in difficult times.

Born to a Ukrainian mother and a Russian father, Victoria Belim grew up accustomed to diversity and adapted easily when she emigrated to the United States at age 15. As an adult living in Brussels, in 2014, Belim followed the escalating conflict between Ukraine and Russia on the news and realized the urgency of learning more about her home country—and, consequently, about herself.

Once arriving at the family home in Bereh, where her grandmother, Valentina, still lived, childhood memories of running through the orchard and listening to her great-grandparents' stories came flooding back. Combined with the desire to reconnect with her roots was the curiosity to discover what had happened to a great-uncle who disappeared in the 1930s. Why didn't anyone talk about Nikodim? How could someone simply disappear?

As he gathered small clues during his many trips to Ukraine, Belim had to confront the reality of a post-Soviet bureaucracy that still permeated government departments and his family's insistence on not discussing the past.

Upon finally gaining access to her great-uncle's archives, Belim not only understood the power of stories, but also that lies and truths are matters of perspective and that past events can profoundly affect the present of countless people.

My Ukraine presents the lives of four generations of a multicultural family and portrays the historical complexity of a country and a people marked by conflict and inequality, but also by hope and culture.

“[...] A captivating book that follows, in rich detail, four generations of a family [...] and contextualizes the current Ukrainian War, without failing to reflect on culture, art, geography and language borders, and how all of this is capable of affecting our particular complexity.” — The Bookseller

“Part memoir, part thriller [...] this portrait of a fractured Ukrainian family shows how deep wounds can run, and that healing them means being able to overcome decades of silence, secrets, and denial.” — The Guardian