Maria Galina – Dar Prize 2025

The book NEAR THE WAR by Maria Galina has been awarded the Dar Prize 2025. Maria Galina has declined the award and wrote an open letter about her refusal. She also sent a statement to the jury and organizers. Both documents are published on the website of Dar Prize with a statement by Mikhail Shishkin as chairman of the jury.

These diary-like notes by Maria Galina are titled NEAR THE WAR because they are not about the war, but about the new everyday life that was caused and created by the war. They are autobiographically rooted painful descriptions of metamorphoses from Russian to Ukrainian, from life in Moscow to Odesa, from old to new communities. This book is not about the aggressors or the chaos they cause, not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about an author‘s return to her city like Odysseus has reached Ithaca again.