The Theater

In the tradition of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, a short and piercing look at a critical episode in the Ukraine war from the George Polk Award–winning author of They Will Have to Die Now. In March of 2022, the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was bombed by Russian forces, the worst act of mass civilian killing in the still ongoing conflict. This brief book tells the story of a select number of survivors out of the many hundreds who had been driven from their homes to seek shelter there and were killed in an instant. It is a story of the ordinary men and women of the young country—theater workers, factory workers, actors, teachers—many of whom dismissed Putin’s saber-rattling and were subsequently shocked by the onslaught and brutality of the invasion. Through their stories, we get deeply invested in their struggle for survival and their larger hopes and dreams for a better life in a land still deeply tied to past traumas. The mordant humor, pluck, and humanity of so many of these characters makes for inspiring reading amidst the reality of a bleak and tragic war. There is no better way to learn the history of the region, the larger forces and personalities that led to the conflict, and what is ultimately at stake in this most consequential European war since WWII, than this book.