UKR-TAZ

The nearly 400-page, richly illustrated anthology Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth is now available for pre-ordering and for library orders. Please encourage your libraries and bookstores to order it.

The book features the work of 30+ Ukrainian authors and artists that together articulate “what in the world is worth fighting for” — a world in which, in the face of history’s repetitions and the future’s uncertainties, we nevertheless persist, in Katya Buchatska’s words, in “plant[ing] a garden so that we have something to lose.”

Political philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes about it:

“Urgently needed, Terra Invicta focuses on the catastrophic environmental impact of the Russian aggression on Ukraine. It demonstrates how the genocidal Russian attack systematically destroys natural resources, renders large domains uninhabitable, and endangers nuclear power plants. New habitats are emerging where old forms of life were destroyed. Ivakhiv’s volume makes it clear that there is no choice between ecological concerns and struggle against military aggression: in Ukraine, they are the two moments of the same struggle. For this reason alone, Terra Invicta deserves to become an instant classic, a volume that everyone who wants to grasp the contours of our global crisis should read.”

And Andrey Kurkov, leading Ukrainian novelist and essayist, writes:

“The war in Ukraine affects the ecology of nature and the ecology of consciousness throughout the world. This book is the best way to understand today’s Ukraine and the impact of Russian aggression on your life, no matter what country you live in.”

Below is a brief description followed by a list of the contents and ordering information (which includes a 25% discount). In addition, the full-colour book features art by Katya Buchatska, Nikita Kadan, Kateryna Aliinyk, Arsen Savadov, Anna Zvyagintseva, Zhanna Kadyrova, Kateryna Lysovenko, and some of the authors listed. Deep gratitude to all of the authors and artists involved, and to the wonderful sprites at McGill-Queen’s University Press. Royalties will go to Ukraine’s defense for as long as the war continues.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 produced not only military and humanitarian responses but also scholarly and artistic ones from Ukrainians looking to the future of their country.

Terra Invicta is a series of critical and creative articulations of pasts, presents, and possible futures involving humans and the more-than-human world. Contributors suggest that Ukraine is caught in an environmental war, waged by a fossil-fuel superpower against people who are prepared to lay down their lives to protect their land. This volume explores the relationship between Ukrainians — a multiethnic and multireligious people with a complicated history — and the Ukrainian land, the zemlia to which they belong. Themes include decoloniality, ecocultural identity, the politics of reconstruction, and artistic responsibility amid a war for national survival. Chapters emphasize the value of reviving multispecies relations with the land, positively transforming multicultural relations with history, and reinvigorating grassroots engagements with the state and society.

Terra Invicta grapples with the role of artistic expression in the face of war and collective loss and what it means to commit to a place, a land, a territory, in a world set in constant motion.

CONTENTS

Introduction Adrian Ivakhiv, “Earthbound@ClimateCrisis.war: What Does it Mean to be Here (Tut)?”

Part I Обставини/Conditions: Anthropocenes and Colonialities

• 1. Asia Bazdyrieva, “Ukraine in the Anthropocene”
• 2. Kateryna Botanova, “Decolonial Thinking and Artistic Practice in Ukraine After February 2022”
• 3. Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, “Heart of Earth: The Flapping of Butterflies’ Wings”
• Interlude 1. Larion Lozovyi and Natasha Chychasova, “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”
• 4. Svitlana Biedarieva, “Unfolding Coloniality: Ecocide as the Erasure of Memory”
• 5. Lesia Kulchynska, “Impossible, Potential, Unavoidable, Invisible”

Part II Ґрунт/Ground: Earthy, Vegetal, and Arboreal (Be)longings

• 6. Iryna Kovalenko, “Zemlia: Soil and Seed as Weapons of Resistance in Ukrainian Popular Culture”
• 7. Darya Tsymbalyuk, “I Dream of Seeing the Steppe Again”
• 8. Iryna Zamuruieva, “Into Kin-Regions with Horytsvit Vesnianyi”
• 9. Yuliia Kishchuk, “Split Gills as Companion Species: On Mushrooms, Nuclear Colonialism, and War”
• 10. Kateryna Filyuk, “Goethe’s Oak and Mohyla’s Linden: History from an Arboreal Perspective”
• Interlude 2. Sofiia Holubeva, “40 x 30 x 20”

Part III Рух/Movement: Mappings and Passages

• 11. Tanya Richardson, Vladyslav Balynskyy, Ihor Beliakov, Nataliia Brusentsova, Vasyl Fedorenko, and Ivan Rusev, “Amphibious Landings: Interspecies Relations after the Destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station”
• 12. Maria Sonevytsky, “Indigenous Futurity in Exile: Mapping Jamala’s QIRIM”
• 13. Olya Zikrata, “Sonic Fictions in the Ruins of Catastrophe”
• 14. Valentyna Kharkhun, “Revisiting and Reimagining Chornobyl: The Multiple Aftermaths of Catastrophe”
• Interlude 3. Taras Polataiko and Violetta Oliinyk, “Castle-New-Castle”

Part IV Припущення/Conjectures: Conversations and Speculations

• 15. Asia Bazdyrieva, Adrian Ivakhiv, Svitlana Matviyenko, and Oleksiy Radynski, “A Wartime Conversation on Ukraine, Coloniality, and Futurity”
• 16. Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta and Olena Stiazhkina, “The Public Life of Food”
• 17. Oleksii Vasyliuk, “War and Wild Nature: An Ecologist Speculates on the Future of Ukrainian Wildlife”
• 18. Yuri Yefanov, “We Will Definitely Talk About This After the Last Air Raid Alert Stops”

Postscript Adrian Ivakhiv, “Decolonization (of the Unnamed Other) is Not a Metaphor”

Adrian Ivakhiv holds the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University.

Cover image (top, above) is a variation of Nikita Kadan’s “A Shadow on the Earth.” Inner cover image (second one above) is from a painting by Darya Tsymbalyuk.

384 pp · 6 ¼ x 9 ¼ · ISBN 9780228025832 November 2025 · paperback $49.95 $37.46.

Preorder with 25% discount code MQ25 online or directly with the distributor in your area until 31 December 2025. Canada UTP Distribution: 1-800-565-9523 utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca. USA & Rest of World: Chicago Distribution Center 1-800-621-2736 orders@press.uchicago.edu. UK & Europe: Combined Academic Publishers +44(0)01423526350 enquiries@combinedacademic.co.uk.

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