She, reserved and modest, writes “My dear Pavlo”.
He, more expansive and demonstrative, calls her "My dear love", or my
divtchynko
, literally "little girl", an affectionate nickname, often used in Ukrainian.
She is in Paris, with their four children.
He is on the front, in the middle of shots and bombs.
For many months, encouraged by Doan Bui, a senior reporter at “l'Obs” and Prix Albert-Londres, Victoriya and Pavlo Matyusha, separated by the war ravaging Ukraine, wrote letters to each other.
They are published in a collection, which comes out this Wednesday, February 14 at Iconoclaste.
“Letters of Love and War” plunges us into the intimacy of this couple who could be ours.
And it's upsetting.
When the war broke out in February 2022, the family lived in kyiv.
He is a writer and consultant.
She is an interpreter for international conferences.
For two months, they wait in a house in the Ukrainian mountains, far from the capital.
Then Pavlo decides to join his country's army against the Russian attacker.
“Where I want to be, where I must be, with my brothers in arms,” he wrote in the first missive.
Viktoriya chooses to take refuge in Paris with their children, aged 4 to 13.
“My priority was the future of the children, my duty as a mother,” she summarizes, when we meet her in Paris, at the headquarters of the publishing house.
The separation begins.
There are text messages, calls, when the network is not too bad.
But the weight of distance sets in.
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