Award-winning journalist Tomás Forró explores the Ukraine war through the eyes of those living through it.
First published in Central Europe in 2024, Song of Sirens by the Slovak journalist Tomás Forró covers the Russian invasion of Ukraine in nuanced "shades of gray," rather than in the black and white treatment it often receives in Western media and books. Brutal and evocative, meticulously reported and personally rendered, this work of literary reportage tells the story of the war through the eyes of its actual participants: soldiers, volunteers, and civilians from whom the public rarely hears.
Before the readers' eyes, the real-life individuals in this book turn from soldiers to deserters, volunteers to burglars, civilians to collaborators. Song of Sirens is the story of a people who are trying to survive, as well as a postcommunist country struggling with its identity and corruption amid the threat of its very existence. It is also the personal account of Tomás Forró, Slovak journalist, humanitarian worker, and (unarmed) part of military operations on the front line.
Forró introduces us to a Ukraine that the world has rarely seen--and that he never imagined would come to pass. Beginning just before the launch of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he blends reporting, personal testimonies, and personal reflection, dispelling common Western mythologies related to the conflict and showing its heroes as full-blown human beings with their contradictions and weaknesses. Here, the war serves as a background that reveals troubled human nature and the difficulties of post-Soviet societies trying to break free from their past.
