Darya has hated Aleksei Marchenko for six months.
He is always late. Always smiling like he knows something about you that you have not said out loud. Always looking at her like she is a puzzle he has already solved.
Then the sirens start. The lights go out. And they end up in a basement together with two candles and nowhere to go.
This is not a story about the war.
It is a story about what happens when you finally stop hiding.
A slow burn romance set in Kyiv during the war, While the City Sleeps explores the specific intimacy of two people who have run out of reasons to be careful.
Autorentext
Vera Koval was born between two countries and has never fully belonged to either. She writes about the wars we fight inside ourselves, the ones that don't make the news but leave the deepest marks. Her stories live in basements during air raids, in kitchens at 4am, in the specific silence between two people who want each other and have run out of reasons not to. She believes the most honest things are written in the dark.