US journalist publishes book about tragic Mariupol theater attack

Hungarian news site 444.hu published a review of James Verini’s book about survivors of Russia’s March 2022 bombing of the Mariupol theater shelter.

The review says the theater had been turned into a shelter for roughly 1,000 civilians, including sick people and infants, when the Russian army deliberately dropped bombs on it.

Verini reported for the New York Times Magazine during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His book was published in the United States in May.

The book largely avoids military-tactical analysis, broad historical background, political overview and ideological debate, except where needed to place its characters. It says the blurb invokes John Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” which presented the destruction of the atomic bomb through the fate of six survivors.

The review states that the Mariupol theater bombing marked a turning point in interpretations of the war, conveying that Putin did not want to rule or re-educate Mariupol’s residents, but to exterminate them.

The book gives a complex and nuanced picture, portraying its subjects affectionately but as fallible people.

A review published on the Kirkus website states that, like the book They Must Die Now (2019), about an Iraqi town captured by ISIS, Verin’s informative interviews and straightforward fiction bring us as close as possible to the experiences of his subjects. As ceilings and walls collapse, some survivors lose consciousness. Others dig through the rubble, searching for loved ones. A boy learns that his mother is dead when he notices his mother’s pink nail polish on her hand, torn from her body.

What follows are mass graves and the insane claims of zombies—the local term for those brainwashed by Vladimir Putin’s propaganda—that the bombing was a hoax.