The book War & Justice Diary: Looking at Women, Looking at War by Ukrainian author Viktoria Amelina has been awarded the 2025 Orwell Prize in the Political Writing (nonfiction) category.
The announcement was made on the Orwell Prize’s official account on X and reported by Ukrinform.
“An unforgettable picture of the human consequences of war,” said Kim Darroch, Chair of Judges.
Darroch added that Amelina “brings to her narrative the acuity of a journalist and the artistry of a born writer, making her a true heir of George Orwell.”
According to The Guardian, this book — Amelina’s only nonfiction work — documents Ukrainian women’s resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion. Among the book’s protagonists are a soldier, a human rights activist, and a librarian.
The award was announced at a ceremony in London on George Orwell’s birthday. Amelina’s husband accepted the award on her behalf. The GBP 3,000 prize money will go toward continuing the New York Literary Festival she founded in the village of New York, Donetsk region.
At the time of Russia’s invasion in 2022, Amelina had been working on a novel, but soon shifted her focus to poetry and nonfiction. Just before her death, she sent the final draft of War & Justice Diary to a friend.
After her passing, a group of writers and her husband compiled the manuscript — about 60% complete — into a readable version, adding footnotes and incorporating material from earlier drafts.
The book was published in spring 2025 by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.
As previously reported, Viktoria Amelina was a writer, civic activist, and member of PEN Ukraine, as well as the founder of the New York Literary Festival in the town of New York, Bakhmut district, Donetsk region.
In 2022, she joined Truth Hounds, a team of field researchers documenting Russian war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Amelina died on July 1, 2023, at Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro due to injuries sustained during a Russian missile strike on a restaurant in Kramatorsk on June 27, where she had been dining with a delegation of Colombian journalists and writers.
Source: Ukrainian writer Viktoria Amelina posthumously awarded Orwell Prize 2025
