Undefeatable

Reviews / Votes

Evans is a wonderful writer and observer, a stylist as elegant and gloriously free-wheeling as the late Jonathan Raban. Each paragraph has a lapidary charm. There is plenty of history too, effortlessly told. -- Luke Harding * A 'sleeping beauty' soaked in blood * Evans' Odesa is a city both fragile and resilient, and has allure in every crack and corner...In his reflections, you sense the emotional toll of personal relationships as well as the increasingly toxic dynamic between Ukraine and Russia - and, equally striking, the fraught relationship Russians have with their own state. -- Francis Dearnley * A very loving letter to Odesa - once a poet's haven, now a Russian target. * Evans' book carefully splices together the personal and the political, and some of his most fascinating characters are still wrestling with the borders of their identities. -- Peter Pomerantsev * The battle for Odesa * 'Julian Evan's Undefeatable has a lust for life on its side from the very first page. This is a memoir brimming with emotion and good humour, even as Evans arrives back in Odesa...under bombardment.'



- Viv Groskop, The Financial Times -- Viv Groskop