The war at Europe’s doorstep often prevents us from truly thinking about it. Here, two Ukrainian scholars help us to conceptualize what is universal and what is particular about this conflict, and what life in wartime reveals about life in general.

In what ways does war affect the most fundamental categories of existence – our relationship to time, space, home, or death? How does it also give rise to new notions, such as the "afterlife" of a person who has lost everything? Drawing on their travels to devastated combat zones, Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko attempt to understand and share the lessons of life on the edge, "that place where life fights fiercely to defend itself and every inch of its territory."