Diary of an Invasion

Product Information

Romana Yaremyn poses in the bookshop she runs in Lviv on 20 April, among hundreds of books evacuated from her bookshop and publishing house in embattled Kharkiv. Photograph: Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images 30 March 2022

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Waterstones Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Waterstones

One of the most important Ukrainian voices throughout the Russian invasion, the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees collects his searing dispatches from the heart of Kyiv. This journal of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a twenty-first-century war. Andrey Kurkov has been a consistent satirical commentator on his adopted country of Ukraine. His most recent work, Grey Bees,in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens,is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine. From day one I stopped writing fiction. I couldn't concentrate on anything but reality. So, when I was asked to comment about events, I started speaking on radio and television then writing about what was happening." We have a small garden and we hope that we can plant potatoes and carrots for ourselves. For us it is a hobby, but what kind of hobby can you have during a war? If the Ukrainian army manages to drive the Russian military away from our region, we will try to return to Lazarevka, to live a normal life again. Although the term "normal life" now seems but a myth, an illusion. In actuality, there can be no normal life for my generation now. Every war leaves a deep wound in the soul of a person. It remains a part of life even when the war itself has ended. I have the feeling that the war is now inside me. It is like knowing that you live with a tumour that cannot be removed. You cannot get away from the war. It has become a chronic, incurable disease. It can kill, or it can simply remain in the body and in the head, regularly reminding you of its presence, like a disease of the spine. I fear I will carry this war with me even if my wife and I some day go on holiday – to Montenegro or Turkey, as we once did."Kurkov draws us with deceptive ease into a dense complex world full of wonderful characters."—Michael Palin This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. Ukraine has lost probably 50,000 people already - 30,000 in Mariupol alone - so in every village there are now widows and orphans. This hate will not disappear." Paraphrasing Kurkov himself, at some point you start looking for internal enemies. And that's understandable. On the night of February 23rd this year a few writers and journalists gathered in the Kyiv flat of renowned writer Andrey Kurkov, where their host fed them borshch, Ukraine’s national dish.

Diary of an Invasion - Andrey Kurkov - Google Books Diary of an Invasion - Andrey Kurkov - Google Books

The fact that the crimes of the Gulag… are not a historical trauma for Russia today proves that Russia has not yet recovered from the past — Andrey Kurkov Kurkov’s thoughts on an extremely important question for Ukrainians, as well as many Eastern Europeans, regarding the historical memory and historical trauma are compelling and important. Kurkov explores the suppression of collective trauma and how historical injuries affect the construction of national identity. He discusses at length the case of Ukraine, Russia as well as Lithuania. Some people seem to need an extra rush of adrenaline to live a normal life. I do not need this. I would rather be in our village now, watching the onset of spring, the first flowers and cherry blossom. If I were in the village right now, I would visit my neighbours Nina and Tolik twice a day, maybe more often. We would listen to the distant explosions of shells and try to understand which side they were coming from."As if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian National character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for love of life.” No one with the slightest interest in this war, or the nation on which it is being waged, should fail to read Andrey Kurkov' -- Dominic Lawson, Daily Mail The Ukrainian novelist whose vivid journals have captured the world’s attention, has thrown himself into touring the world to make the case for his nation. Here he talks borscht and politics His voice is genial but also impassioned, never more so than when deploring Putin’s efforts to erase Ukrainian culture and history. Ukraine, he says, “will either be free, independent and European, or it will not exist at all”. That’s why the war has to be fought, with no concession of territory. And he remains quietly hopeful that it will be won.