Drabyna (ÃÂÃÂðñøýð) (translit. Drabyna; lit. The Ladder) is a 2023 Ukrainian novel by writer and translator Yevheniia Kuznetsova, published by Old Lion Publishing House. The novel won the BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year award (2023).
Ukrainian critics reviewed Drabyna as a contemporary wartime novel focused on private life rather than battlefield narratives, including attention to family dynamics and emotional endurance. LiRoom highlighted the novelâÂÂs accessible, understated storytelling in approaching difficult themes.
The book received wider public attention after it won the BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year award in December 2023.
The novel centres on Tolik, a Ukrainian IT specialist living in Spain whose distance from family is disrupted after the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022, prompting an influx of relatives and a confrontation with responsibility, displacement, and the strains of relationships under wartime pressures. Ukrainian-language coverage discussed the novel in the context of everyday life and displacement during the full-scale Russian invasion.