Julian Evans

Julian Evans grew up on Australia’s east coast and in the south London suburbs in the 1960s. He is the author of Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific and Semi-Invisible Man, an acclaimed biography of the writer Norman Lewis.

His new book, Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War (2024), is a memoir of the Black Sea port of Odesa, a city he discovered by accident in the 1990s and fell in love with. He has lived in Odesa in peacetime and under attack, and has been writing about Ukraine for nearly 30 years. He has also reported on Russia’s war from the frontline since 2015. Undefeatable is an intimate story of one of the world’s most human, irrepressible cities, which William Boyd has called “at once a brilliant portrait of the Ukrainian city and the author’s emotional connection with the place, and a reminder of the dark consequences of Putin’s insane, hubristic war” (Books of the Year, Daily Mail).

Julian has also presented radio and television documentaries, including BBC Radio 3’s 20-part series on the rise of the European novel, The Romantic Road, and the BBC Four film José Saramago: a Life of Resistance. He is a recipient of the Prix du Rayonnement de la Langue Française from the Académie Française. He lives between south-west England and Odesa.