New Books in Art

Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is
a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk
regions of the Ukrainian east, the old and recent history of the region
as seen by an esteemed academic multi-disciplinary scholar Victoria
Donovan in her numerous travels to the region prior to the full-scale
invasion. Seen through a deeply empathetic lens of conversations with
local curators, historians, museum workers, and artists, the region is
shown in its complexity, with the uniqueness of its landscapes,
endangered biodiversity, entangled colonialisms of its past and a
threatened future.

Since start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in
2014, its eastern region—Donbas—has been synonymous with conflict. With
the escalation of that war in 2022, its, cities such as Bakhmut and
Lysychansk have become familiar to us through the images and reports of
brutal devastation. Victoria Donovan excavates a rich, multicultural
history of this area, and paints a radically different picture.

Travelling
from the dramatic, jagged peaks of Bilokuzmynivka to the marshland of
Mariupol, from a warehouse rave to an abandoned gypsum mine, the
physical world and its importance to this region’s identity is brought
to vivid life. But above all else, by speaking to those whose lives are
embedded there now—curators, artists, railway workers, young people who
have grown up amidst instability and destruction—Donovan amplifies local
voices and reveals the intensely personal lived reality of Putin’s war.

Victoria
Donovan is Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and
Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms, Southeast, Central
and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Viktoriia
Grivina is an independent anthropologist and writer, author of Kharkiv,
a War City (Ibidem, 2025), and Kharkiv is a Dream: Public Art and
Activism, 2013–2023 (Ibidem, 2025).
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What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform
American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with
acclaimed cultural critic David Denby to discuss his book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer (Henry Holt, 2025), a vibrant portrait of four extraordinary Americans whose Jewish identities helped shape the modern United States.

Though
they worked in vastly different fields, Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks,
Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer shared a remarkable historical moment.
Coming of age after World War II, they entered an America where Jewish
opportunity was expanding and antisemitism was beginning to recede.
Their Jewish heritage, energized by the freedoms of American life,
fueled bold, unconventional careers that reshaped music, comedy,
literature, feminism, and public debate.

Denby paints these figures in all their complexity: ambitious,
difficult, generous, provocative, and endlessly creative. Rather than
offering simple hero worship, he explores how their outsized
personalities and relentless drive allowed them to challenge old
assumptions about art, politics, gender, humor, and what it meant to be
both fully Jewish and fully American.

Together, Denby and Katz
explore why this particular generation produced so many cultural
revolutionaries, how Jewish identity informed their work without
defining it, and what their legacies reveal about the changing place of
Jews in postwar America.
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Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45 (Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War.

Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the auxiliary services, and manufacturing, among others-to support the British war effort. Indeed, their prints, drawings, and paintings were part of a broader scheme to uphold morale and promote much-needed citizen involvement on the home front. While there is growing interest, the importance of their remit in the history of the Second World War and the quality of their artistry have nonetheless not yet secured them a significant place in scholarship. Art and Citizenship in Conflict seeks to amend this gap.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a progressive artistic and curatorial vision.

Through insightful examinations of performance art, video art, and the development of feminist thought in Yugoslavia, Foerschner reveals how the region carved out a distinctive place within the international postwar avant-garde. Situating Yugoslav feminism in dialogue with Western and neighbouring contexts, she sheds new light on the complex intersections of art, politics, and social change. By exploring artistic responses to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the enduring political dimensions of cultural production, this book invites readers to reconsider the legacies of activist art and their resonance in our present time.
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On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It’s the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.’s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically.

Matthew Campbell’s The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (Penguin, 2026) dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the Cambodian forests, through dealers in Bangkok like Douglas Latchford, and then into museums and billionaire homes in the West. And he also digs into how this trade fell apart: How the U.S. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers and museums like the Met to give this art back.

Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, the Financial Times, and The Times. Matt has reported from more than twenty-five countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work has earned some of journalism’s highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW for both feature and investigative reporting

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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