‘Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns: Thoughts on War’ by Artem Chapeye to be translated into Chinese and Korean

“Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns: Thoughts on War” by Ukrainian writer and military officer Artem Chapeye will be published in Chinese and Korean.

The Chinese translation will be published by the Taiwanese publishing house Cite Publishing Group. The edition to be released in South Korea will be the book’s ninth translation. According to the author, agreements for eight of these translations were secured within a single year.

“Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns” is a collection of essays published by Publishing House XXI. On the publisher’s website, it is described as “a raw account of the inner transformation of a person who chose to become a soldier.”

Chapeye previously mentioned that he wrote this book primarily for an international audience as a kind of “explanation” of the war and the experience of someone who found themselves in the middle of it. One of the first international editions was the French translation: the book was published by Bayard in February 2024.

In April 2025, the independent American publisher Seven Stories Press released “Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns: Thoughts on War.” It was later included in The Washington Post’s list of the best nonfiction books of 2025.

In December 2025, it was announced that the book would also be published in the Netherlands by De Bezige Bij under the title “Gewone mensen dragen geen machinegeweren.”

Artem Chapeye is a Ukrainian writer, translator, reporter, traveler, and member of PEN Ukrainian. He has written travelogs, co-authored a book of war reports, produced the novels “Red Zone” and “They Have Arrived,” and released the book “Paternity Leave.” He has been nominated for and won awards for his literary and journalism work.

RELATED: Soldier Artem Chapeye: If I hadn’t gone the first day, I would have gone a week later

Main image: Chapeye’s Facebook page

Copyediting: Ben Angel