Eight years before the recent Russian invasion, a popular uprising in Kyiv overthrew the old Moscow-backed government in favor of moving toward the European Union — an act for which Russia has been punishing Ukraine ever since. It is those events that inspired Kalani Pickhart’s recent novel, “I Will Die in a Foreign Land.” Hailed as one of the best books of 2021, it has found renewed relevance in the aftermath of the invasion. In this podcast, she joins New Lines Magazine's Lydia Wilson to discuss what first drew her to the story, the relationship between fiction and journalism, and how the long history of Russian aggression against Ukraine led to the current crisis. (Produced by Joshua Martin)
The Lede