‘This means so much’ – Author Jen Stout wins award for book on Ukraine war 

Author Jen Stout has won an award for her “accomplished and beautiful” book about her reporting on the war in Ukraine.

Night Train to Odesa picked up the First Book of the Year award at Scotland’s National Book Awards in Edinburgh on Thursday.

In her acceptance award the Fair Isle author said: ’This means so much.

” This is a profoundly Scottish book. We have almost no foreign correspondents left in Scotland and we don’t have enough low income writers and working class writers.

“Everything that I did in Ukraine and in Russia and in writing this book is because of other people and their help.

“Particularly the people in Ukraine who showed me so much kindness and help all of the time, so many people meant that I could hold up this book.”

Judges from the Saltire Society described Night Train to Odesa as: “‘Accomplished and beautiful work, blending journalism, memoir, history, art.”

It tells of Stout’s time reporting from the front line in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

The book features stories from the night trains, birthday parties, military hospitals and bunkers.

Since the book’s publication in May, Stout has seen her work selected as a Radio 4 Book of the Week.

It has been described by The Times as “a frank and moving account of the Shetland journalist’s time covering the war in Ukraine’.

The Observer said it was  “a luminous love letter to an embattled nation.”

And The Scotsman praised her work as “a celebration of love, courage and care for others”.

Night Train to Odesa is published by Birlinn imprint Polygon.