Lana Kortchik

Lana Kortchik approaches European conflict, displacement, and family survival through historical fiction. Her first published novel, Savaged Lands, reached readers in 2017, establishing her interest in lives altered by war. Kortchik was born in Siberia, grew up in Ukraine, and later settled in Australia, giving her writing a personal connection with the region's languages and historical memory. The novel precedes later books such as Sisters of War, The Story of Us, Daughters of the Resistance, and The Winter Garden. Across those works, political events are approached through households, friendships, and intimate choices rather than through military chronology alone. Savaged Lands marks the beginning of that body of fiction. Its title points to damaged territory, but Kortchik's continuing subject is the human effort to preserve attachment and identity when familiar institutions collapse. The book also shows the early form of her recurring focus on Eastern Europe and women negotiating the demands of survival. Personal memory, inherited stories, and place anchor that history in experience.