rc101 dispatch: frankfurt book fair 25.

best anti-imperial books from this year's largest book fair.

On my travels to book shows and lectures, I always pick up a bunch of interesting books and meet fascinating people. Recently, I had a thought: what if I start sharing all of it with my subscriber family here? Let me know what you think, and whether it is of any value to you — via the chat link below.

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I was actually not planning to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 at all. The book fair organisers told me that the only option to promote the German translation of my book on the main stage would be as an accessory to an event by ‘good Russians.’ I declined. Reinforcing the imperial notion that Ukrainian voices only matter if presented alongside Russian? Not with my help, thanks.

Only at the last minute did my German publisher, Correctiv, House of Europe, the Goethe Institute, and the Ukrainian Institute in Germany kindly offer me a spot on the Ukrainian national stand. I am endlessly grateful to the Frankfurter Buchmesse for standing on the right side of history and, for the fourth time in a row, banning Russian publishers while amplifying Ukrainian books. But this year’s Frankfurt was a sobering reminder of the remaining gap of how Ukrainians and other russian neighbours see this war and how the rest, including some of our foreign friends, see it.