Aid drives for frontline troops and exhausted teachers: Inside a Russian school during wartime. Read an excerpt from Sergey Lebedenko’s new novel.

Meduza’s publishing house has released Kiru vsyo zaebalo (“Kira Has Fucking Had It”), a novel by journalist, writer, and book blogger Sergei Lebedenko — author of the Telegram channel Knigizhar (Book Grill) — about a history teacher from a small Russian town who believes in patriotic ideals, collects care packages for the front, and loves her job, but again and again runs up against a world where familiar ideas have long since been stripped of their original meaning, leaving no room for her sincerity. Kira also sometimes sees and hears things other people can’t — she “goes under.” These episod