A short but brilliant book, Harding tells the story of Voznesensk, the small, southern Ukrainian farm that fought off the Russian Army's invasion in March 2022, facing down unbelievable odds, and winning. How do the "little people" make sense of what's happening when their leaders feed them a very different narrative to their experiences on the ground. This is an improbable but true story of incredible courage, heartbreaking loss (Voznesensk's defence wasn't a bloodless one) and sheer bloody-mindedness.

But at the core of it, it's a very gentle and kind book in a panorama of events that are decidedly short on gentleness and kindness, and you got to appreciate that. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Sergei grabs a Molotov cocktail and lies in wait for Russian tanks as they push towards Dead Water Bridge. Each street-level detail illuminates a bigger truth: why Ukraine succeeded in resisting Russia’s shock and awe onslaught last year, and how Moscow’s brazen attempt to subjugate an independent nation failed.I'm the author of "These Are Not Gentle People," a true-crime novel set in South Africa and published in South Africa, the UK and the Netherlands. In March 2022, one week after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a small farming town in the south of the country became the unlikely focus of the Kremlin’s attention. On the morning of Wednesday 2 March 2022, an armoured personnel carrier clattered into her yard, knocking over her favourite pear tree.

Luke Harding in The Observer: “This gripping story is the literary equivalent of a superb miniature painting. Valentin, a quick-talking lawyer, joins the town's 'Dads Army' defenders, crouching in a trench with an AK47. A bunch of pot-bellied, tracksuit-wearing, down-on-their-luck guys, aka territorial defense volunteers in the full-scale war, stand over a makeshift trench at the outskirts of their tiny town.

It's a very gentle frog's-eye view of a total war, with loving portraits of the people who are overlooked at the best of times: people who had fallen through the cracks of history and welfare networks, living with passports of a country that collapsed more than 30 years ago. This short book gives helpful insights to a war that can feel a little abstract for those of us on the other side of the globe!