In a cap­ti­vat­ing and orig­i­nal nar­ra­tive blends pol­i­tics, his­to­ry, and reportage in a street-lev­el account of a vex­ing and trou­bled region, Black Square presents an evoca­tive, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al por­trait of Ukrain­ian life under the shad­ow of Putin. In vivid, orig­i­nal prose, Sophie Pinkham draws read­ers into the fas­ci­nat­ing lives of her con­tem­po­raries, a gen­er­a­tion that came of age after the fall of the USSR only to see pro­tes­tors shot on Kiev’s main square, Crimea annexed by Rus­sia, and a bit­ter war in east­ern Ukraine. Amid the rub­ble, Pinkham tells sto­ries that con­vey a youth cul­ture flour­ish­ing with­in a trag­i­cal­ly cor­rupt state, intro­duc­ing a cast that includes a charis­mat­ic, drug-addict­ed doc­tor help­ing to smooth the tran­si­tion to democ­ra­cy, a Bolano-esque art gal­lerist prone to pub­lic nudi­ty, and a Russ­ian Jew­ish clar­inetist agi­tat­ing for Ukrain­ian lib­er­a­tion. With a deep knowl­edge of Slav­ic lit­er­a­ture and a keen, out­sider’s eye for the dark absur­di­ty of post-Sovi­et soci­ety, Pinkham deliv­ers an indeli­ble impres­sion of a coun­try on the brink.