Thinking with the Blood

This compelling short-read recounts award-winning author and correspondent Owen Matthews' journey across war-torn Ukraine in the summer of 2014. But not only is this a professional journalist's account: it is an insightful and personal journey into the history of this blood-soaked land of curses and new beginnings.

Matthews retraces the roots of his mother's tragedy-struck Ukrainian-born family and discovers that "though we believe we think with our rational mind, part of us - a deep part - thinks with the blood." He understands this country in a way few other foreign correspondents can, and tells the story of Europe's latest civil war through the eyes of an eccentric cast of participants, from a sic-fi novelist turned general in the rebel capital of Donetsk to a the Jewish leader of an Ukrainian ultranationalist party in Kiev.

It is an extraordinary insight into the disturbing political events of 2014 that tore Ukraine apart and sent Russia spiraling into a vortex of reactionary nationalism. Matthews warns of the long term ramifications for not just for the people of the region, but for all of us in the rest of the world too.