Winning authors of BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year 2025: Lena Lyagushonkova, Katya Shtanko, Myroslav Layuk

BBC News Ukraine has revealed the winners of its 2025 Book of the Year awards presented in partnership with the Cultural Programme of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The winning titles were announced at a ceremony at the “Sens” bookstore in Kyiv on Thursday, 11 December:

• BBC Book of the Year 2025 – A Kitten Peed on My Flag (Мій прапор запісяв котик) by Lena Lyagushonkova (publisher: Urbino, Lviv, 2025)
• BBC Children’s Book of the Year 2025 – The Rain Riders (Вершники дощу) by Katya Shtanko (publisher: A-BA-BA-GA-LA-MA-GA, Kyiv, 2025)
• BBC Book of the Year: Essays 2025 – The Lists (Списки) by Myroslav Layuk (publisher: Ukrainer, Kyiv, 2025)

Commenting on the winner of the 2025 BBC Book of the Year award – A Kitten Peed on My Flag – BBC News Ukraine editor and Awards panel member, Marta Shokalo, says: “Some might say that Lyagushonkova’s writing is ‘depressive’ – about old traumas, about life and survival in a gloomy Soviet and post-Soviet reality, about dark and downtrodden people, about endless hopelessness and emptiness. I disagree. This is a life-giving book. It’s about the fact that you can and must live your one and only life under any circumstances, no matter what happens. It is filled with a unique kind of humour that is usually called ‘dark’. But it is with this very dark humour that we carve a path toward the light.”

Awards panel member, writer Svitlana Pyrkalo comments on The Rain Riders, Katya Shtanko’s second Children’s Book of the Year: “The Rain Riders once again takes us to the skies over Ukraine. But this time, the young hero is not travelling with dragons; instead, we see storm clouds gathering over Ukraine’s lands in the east and south. Who will join the fight and who will save the day? Fantasy and reality blend in this gripping story for children and teenagers.”

Commenting on the winner of BBC Book of the Year: Essays 2025, The Lists, Awards panel member, Professor Vira Ageyeva, says: “This documentary book also adopts the scale of a classical epic as Myroslav Laiuk places the experience of the current war, an eyewitness testimony, in a context that is Homeric, ancient and like a chronicle. Thus, we begin to understand and feel that we are undergoing a global shift of coordinates, a great rupture of time and history. We must compile and preserve the lists of losses. Lest we forget. To testify in a court of justice. To keep reminding ourselves and the whole world of the price of this war.”

The winning author in each category is awarded a Ukrainian hryvnya equivalent of £1,000. The publishers of the winning books will have the right to use the logo of the BBC News Ukraine Book awards on subsequent editions.

The winner of the Reader of the Year 2025 title and prize (a Kindle EBook) for the best reader review is Anastasia Andriiv for her review of Yevhenia Kuznietsova’s book, The Sheep are Alive (Вівці цілі).

This year’s awards were judged by:

• Vira Ageyeva, professor, Ukraine National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”
• Vitaliy Chepynoha, blogger
• Vitaly Chernetsky, professor, the University of Kansas
• Svitlana Pyrkalo, writer
• Marta Shokalo, BBC News Ukraine editor
• Daria Taradai, BBC News Ukraine planning editor (BBC Children’s Book of the Year)

BBC News Ukraine is part of the BBC World Service.

The EBRD is Ukraine’s largest institutional lender, having deployed more than €8.5 billion in the real economy since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Bank has secured a €4 billion capital increase to continue supporting the country’s economy during wartime and in its future reconstruction efforts.