Last year, on 23 May, a Russian missile attack on the Factor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv killed seven people and injured many more. The building was heavily damaged, and most of the books in production at the time were destroyed. One of the books that survived, although damaged by the shelling, was included in the Cambridge University Library's collection. The Ukrainian Institute wrote about this on its Facebook page.
The Overnight Guest is the Ukrainian translation of the novel by American author Heather Gudenkauf. In order to avoid causing further damage, the book must not be opened, so the Cambridge Library has also acquired an undamaged copy (alongside the original English edition) to enable readers to access the text. The damaged copy will be preserved separately as an artefact a physical testament to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
The transfer of the publication was facilitated by the Ukrainian Institute and supported by ICOM UK (the British national branch of the International Council of Museums). The book was transferred to Cambridge University Library through contacts established during a seminar on decolonisation, which was attended by Tetyana Filevska, Creative Director of the Ukrainian Institute, and Mel Bach, Slavic Languages Specialist at Cambridge University Library, and moderated by Mariya Blyzynska of ICOM UK. Vivat, the publisher of the book, has given its consent to the transfer. Another damaged copy from the same printing house was donated to the Imperial War Museum in London.
The University of Cambridge is a leading centre for the study of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language in the UK. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the library's Slavic department has published more than 100 blogs dedicated to the expansion of its Ukrainian collections.