A Brief History of a Long War, published in Ukraine in 2025, is already the most successful graphic novel in Ukrainian history, with the highest number of translations and print runs. The concept and production of the book were carried out exclusively by the publishing house’s co-founders, Eliash Strongowski and Lilia Omelianenko. The idea arose when, as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western artists began to write and create art about the preconditions and reasons behind Russia’s actions. Their position ignored the Ukrainian perspective on the issue, thus excluding Ukrainians as the affected party from understanding and communicating current and historical narratives.
Since Ukraine was trying to survive a genocidal war at that very moment, its voice was taken over by people who were not direct witnesses or participants in the events. Therefore, telling the story in graphic form on behalf of Ukrainians themselves, explaining the preconditions for Russia’s attempts to erase Ukraine as a sovereign country and Ukrainians as an ethnic group, became extremely relevant. Since the publishing house had already produced several Ukraine-centric graphic novels (on feminism, literature, and even borscht), we were able to begin work on the project in the summer of 2023, bringing in the writer and artists best suited for the book.
Having this book published in the USA is a great honor for us. It proves that our cause is heard and seen on a global scale. We hope it will inspire everyone to fight tyranny—Ukrainians have done it for centuries, and so can you.
–Liliia Omelianenko, co-founder of the Ukrainian publishing house Vydavnytstvo
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From A Brief History of a Long War: Ukraine’s Fight Against Russian Domination by Mariam Naiem and illustrated by Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida. Copyright © 2026. Published by Ten Speed Graphic, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
