In the bowels of war – the Pole Szczepan Twardoch has written a ruthless book with “The Zero Line”

All of the novels by the successful Polish author Szczepan Twardoch have dramatic subjects, are set in explosive historical epochs, and revolve around war. The most recent is "Cold," in which a Russian revolutionary ends up in the Gulag and escapes on adventurous journeys through the far north.

With his latest work, "The Zero Line," Twardoch plunges into the hell of the war in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion of the neighboring country, he has personally traveled to the front lines in Donbass several times, risking his life while hiding in trenches, and speaking with Ukrainian soldiers—a reporter with a difference.

He probably wouldn't have been able to write the book without observation and facts, although he believes fiction contains more "truth" because it is "synthetic," Twardoch said in an interview. With a topic like war, a "tremendous, borderline situation in which the human condition is reduced to its essence" and character and humanity are put to the test, a multifaceted perspective is particularly important.

"The Zero Line" fulfills this postulate impressively. Detailed knowledge of weapons systems, especially drones, trench warfare, and the gruesome perseverance in dugouts, holes in the ground, and wet trenches underpins the text, but with its psychological insight into the combatants involved, it goes far beyond any reportage.

This is due to the novel's style. Twardoch has his protagonist narrate in the second person, in an internal dialogue that combines past, present, and imagined future, while simulating a bird's-eye or drone perspective.

Who is this man? A Pole with Ukrainian roots, whose grandfather served in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division and the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army, a trained historian with a thorough knowledge of the "Iliad," a family man who, unable to save his marriage, went to Ukraine as a legionnaire, then fought in three brigades until he was assigned to a special unit on the "wrong" bank of the Dnieper, close to the front. His nickname: Pferd (Polish: Kon).

He describes what lies behind him as the remains of the fire, and himself as someone "who seeks death and has now suddenly realized that he wants to live after all." But the prospects of surviving this war are slim. This is confirmed at the end, when "Horse" is left with nothing but babble of words that fall apart in his mouth. The story is over.

What the reader learns over 255 pages stirs the guts. A close-quarters combat style reminiscent of Remarque and Hemingway. Brutal killing and being killed, admittedly with drones and Starlink. And in the lulls of the fighting, the flood of memories and the longing for a female embrace. Because despite the brutality of war, people are at work, with their primal human needs.

Through his narrator, Twardoch characterizes an entire "cabinet of characters" of fighters: There is the dull "Leopard," once a severe alcoholic, traumatized by the "old man sadism" in the army, now a slacker who sees waiting as his only resistance against the world; "Yagoda," always sober, educated, and well-read, with seven hundred books on his Kindle, which he tries to read in his quiet moments; "Shabla," Saber, the brave sniper; "Rat," "Aryan," and "Malpa," who will take no risk to take down the "Russians."

They all communicate in vulgar military language, cursing lavishly. They discuss the torture methods of the "Pederussians," a subject that also involves a lover of the narrator who has personally experienced rape and torture. Emergency calls are coded; "two hundred" means "dead," "three hundred" means "wounded." These numbers circulate constantly, referring to their own men and the enemy.

In short, war is a horror, a slaughterhouse. Far from all participants agree on its purpose. The will to defend one's fatherland boosts morale, but for the desperados, who have nothing to lose, that doesn't matter. The narrator himself doesn't trust the "cheerful fantasies of omnipotence of the special forces." He is aware of the shortage of ammunition, the lack of soldiers, and cannot imagine recapturing lost territories. While others are unwilling to abandon the borders of 2014, "for which they paid such a high price." A "dissonance of knowledge" that causes reality to disintegrate into irreconcilable versions.

Even we don't know how this unfortunate war, whose toll of casualties after three years is devastating, will end. Twardoch examines it viscerally, so to speak, by delving deep into the fighting, but above all into the minds and bodies of those carrying it out. The sheer brutality of this must be endured. There's no question that war is one of the most extreme, borderline experiences. Whether there's anything to be learned from it isn't something Twardoch wants to decide. But what he shows us in his novel, and how he does it, leaves a lasting impression. Only strong literature can do that.

Szczepan Twardoch: The Zero Line. A novel from the war. Translated from the Polish by Olaf Kühl. Rowohlt-Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2025. 255 pp., Fr. 34.90.