Victoria Amelina: A Posthumous Honor for Her Literary Contributions
Victoria Amelina, who tragically lost her life in 2023 due to a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, has been awarded the prestigious Orwell Prize for her book "Looking at Women, Looking at War".
This announcement was made on the award's official page.
Chair of the jury, Kim Darroch, described her work as "an unforgettable portrayal of the human consequences of war".
Amelina received the award in the "Political Non-Fiction" category. Her English-language book, published in the UK in February 2025, combines diary entries, interviews, reports from war crime sites, and poetry.
The author introduced this book at the 29th BookForum in Lviv, sharing her insights about Ukrainian women striving for justice.
Sadly, she was unable to complete her book before her untimely death from injuries sustained in Kramatorsk in 2023.
The book features heroines such as the documentarian from Truth Hounds nicknamed "Casanova", reporters Yevheniya Podobna and Vera Kuriko-Ahiyenko, human rights activists Oleksandra Matviichuk, Larysa Denysenko, historian Olena Stiazhkina, and others.
Victoria's book was published by William Collins, with a foreword by Margaret Atwood.
The Orwell Prize is awarded annually for political literature in four categories: fiction, non-fiction, journalism, and social justice revelations.
Victoria Amelina was a Ukrainian writer and activist, recognized with the Joseph Conrad-Kożeniowski Literary Prize and nominated for the Central European Literature Award Angelus.
After the full-scale invasion began, she paused her fictional writing and joined the Truth Hounds organization to document human rights violations.
Victoria suffered injuries from a missile strike on a café in Kramatorsk on June 27, 2023, while accompanying a delegation of writers and journalists from Colombia.
Unfortunately, despite medical efforts, she passed away on July 1, 2023.
