The Face of Fire
Date and Time
Location
Book launch and discussion of The Face of Fire with author Oleksii Nikitin and translators Dominique Hoffman and Catherine O'Neil
In conversation with Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed, Preceptor in Slavic Languages and Literatures (Ukrainian language program) at Harvard University
The Face of Fire is set for release on October 27, 2026. Join the notification list now for launch day alerts.
This event is organized by HURI Books, the publications program at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
About the Book
Kyiv, 1941. After the horrors of the Civil War, the Holodomor, and Stalin’s purges, young Jewish boxer Ilya Goldinov and his wife, Feliksa, are looking ahead to a brighter future. Ilya is the top heavyweight boxer of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and is primed for victory as champion of the entire Soviet Union. Feliksa, a country girl who recently moved to Kyiv, is a star athlete herself in track, deep in training for a major race. In the summer of 1941, the Nazi invasion changes everything. Feliksa must set aside her own desires in order to save the life of her daughter. Ilya immediately volunteers to defend his country but must first ensure the safe evacuation of his family, including his mother and siblings.
The Face of Fire offers a tapestry of Ukrainian life under the brutal Soviet and Nazi regimes—and all of it based on declassified NKVD files and the author’s family archive.
About the Author
Oleksii Nikitin is a prose writer, member of the National Writers' Union of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Centre of International PEN. He was born and lives in Kyiv, Ukraine. His works have been published in Ukraine and abroad, and translated into several European languages.
In the early 2000s, Nikitin defined the core theme of his creative work: the history of the generation that came of age during the final decade of the USSR’s existence, yet began its active professional life in independent Ukraine. Kyiv serves as the setting for the majority of his works. In 2011, Nikitin’s novel Istemi was published. In 2016, the novel was released in the United States under the title Y.T.
Oleksii Nikitin is also the author of the novels Victory Park (2016) and Mahjong (2017). In 2016, his novella Sanitar s Institutskoi was published, and in 2021, his novel Ot litsa ognia/Bat-Ami was published. The book is dedicated to the events of World War II in Ukraine. In 2024, Bat-Ami was honored with the Sholom Aleichem Prize. The novel was translated and published in Italy as Di fronte al fuoco (2025) and in the United States by HURI Books as The Face of Fire (2026). In 2024, Nikitin began working on his novel Photocards.
About the Translators
Dominique Hoffman is a translator and scholar of Ukrainian and Eastern European literature, history, and culture. Her doctorate in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill included an interdisciplinary focus on history, literature, and the visual arts. She translates fiction and nonfiction from Ukraine, with a particular interest in works that explore how history is experienced, remembered, and narrated. Previous translations include Olena Stiazhkina's Cecil the Lion Had to Die, published with HURI; Pavlo Kazarin's The Wild West of Eastern Europe, co-translated with Andriy Kononenko; and Yaroslav Hrytsak's Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation. Her translations have received support from English PEN, the Ukrainian Book Institute, and Razom Literature. Forthcoming work includes novels by Victoria Amelina and Anastasia Levkova.
Catherine O’Neil is a literary scholar and translator. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago and her MA from the University of Toronto, and she is currently Associate Professor in the Languages and Cultures Department at the United States Naval Academy. Her publications include a monograph on Pushkin and Shakespeare and articles on Russian, English, Polish and Ukrainian literature. Her current work is translation of Ukrainian literature and academic prose.