Between Russia and Europe warily sits Ukraine. Her recent history has been, and will continue to be, undeniably grim and torturous as its larger bullying neighbour attempts to subjugate her independent will to its own with spurious threads of its own fictional legitimacy.

Since its recent independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990's her governments have moved from autocratic to democratic as she embraced freedom at a now terrible cost to her people.

Her own history over the centuries has been brush stroked either by periods of independence or under the oppressive yoke of other more powerful and belligerent neighbours and Empires. Her borders have changed many times and yet within them her culture, her spirit, has grown vibrant and strong, illuminating humanity in spite of the darkness that falls upon her.

It's authors, almost always cited as 'Russian', or from 'Little Russia' are diverse and brilliant. Indeed, many of us now still see them first as Russian but we hope with this volume her literary talents can be attributed to herself and none other.

Literary leviathans such as Gogol, Bulgakov and Conrad are extraordinary talents but Babel, Korolenko, Blatavsky and all the others presented here are of equal merit and ability and sometimes in very different ways.

Some of her authors stayed within her borders, some moved to other lands. Some may have called themselves Ukrainian but happy within the yoke of Russian or other Empires whilst many others yearned for the freedoms that others enjoyed. In seeing them as Ukrainian first and foremost, their souls, their people and their stories are perhaps more sharply drawn on.