In the Ukrainian countryside, there is a long tradition of having plenty of bread on the table and of eating it with butter and salt or dipping it in milk. Nato may have been re-energised and EU cooperation strengthened, but no one knows how Putin's war will end, which makes Kurkov's poignant book all the more important, telling, as it does, of the devastating impact on ordinary people. Once again, for the third time this century, Ukraine has won the Eurovision song contest. Each of the country’s victories in this competition has come in the wake of historical upheaval. I want to believe that this year’s victory will be the last for many years. I don’t usually watch the Eurovision and I missed this one too, but I’ve listened to the winning song and I like it. Most of all, I like the solidarity of the Europeans who voted for Ukraine. Like Bulgakov, Kurkov moves between cultures and languages. Unlike Bulgakov, who served as a physician in the White Army after the First World War and remained in Moscow until his death, Kurkov remains a proud citizen of Ukraine and an open critic against the kind of cultural homogenization that claims writers and their work for political causes. He knows from history that the lines are never drawn so clearly. The nuance of identity comes up throughout the dozen of his novels translated into English, including Death of the Penguin and, more recently, Grey Bees, which tells the story of a beekeeper from the Donbas who feels increasingly alienated from his own culture amidst the Russian invasion of 2014. Eight months on, despite almost worldwide condemnation of Vladimir Putin's actions, the fighting remains vicious and vast swathes of Ukraine are without water or electricity.

Diary of an Invasion,” Normal Life in Ukraine Has Become In “Diary of an Invasion,” Normal Life in Ukraine Has Become

They say that people remember the bad things more often than the good. Not me. I remember well what has pleased and surprised me in my life, but what I did not like or what has hurt me has been forgotten, left at an almost inaccessible depth in the well of memory. In this we see the instinct of self-preservation, although it works in a special way. We protect our psyche from bad memories and support it with good memories. In our memory, we can idealise the past so that nostalgia soon sets in, even for times that we would not have wished upon our worst enemy." As a young man, Andrey Kurkov travelled round the USSR – on trains, riverboats and in lorries he’d hitched a lift on – interviewing former Soviet bureaucrats. He’d read a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s prohibited The Gulag Archipelago and wanted to know more about the gulag itself. One judge he met owned up to signing 3,000 death warrants for people sentenced without trial. The experience was a lesson to Kurkov about the suppression of memory and truth: members of his own family had suffered forced deportations, famine and decades in the camps, but such traumas weren’t ever discussed. For Kurkov – ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking but long based in Ukraine – truth-telling has been a mission ever since. Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine´s best known authors, kept a diary before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It roughly covers the first 6-7 months of 2022. Actually, it is not really a ´diary´ in the traditional sense, but rather a collection of vignettes and writings to friends of things that interested Kurkov at the time and that he wants to tell you about. This is the first book of Kurkov I read, although I've heard of him before as one of the few Ukrainian authors who have a presence in the global literature community and has English translations. Some list called him the most well-known Ukrainian author. I must say neither I nor most of my Ukrainian friends have heard of him, though some Western friends have.Not all Russia is a collective Putin. The unfortunate thing is that there is within Russia no collective anti-Putin.” The more powerful these mediums are, the longer the works remain relevant to the people, and, in the end, the best of them fall into the cultural canon of historical experience.” Ukraine will either be free, independent, and European, or it will not exist at all. (…) Ukrainians did not give up even when they were not free – after WW2, the partisan war against the Soviets in Ukraine continued until the early 1960s. Ukrainians will not now give up, especially after thirty years of free and independent life.” A week goes by, and all the news is suddenly of the miles and miles of territory Ukraine has liberated in the east, and of the Russian army’s hurried departure. So I send him a message, and a couple of hours later – he was finishing off his column for a Norwegian newspaper – he calls me from somewhere in Germany. Even by his standards – Kurkov has a smile that could light Saint Sophia Cathedral – he sounds happy. “I’m very excited,” he says.

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

Such lofty disdain translates, on the ground, into hatred and murder. At Bucha, the Kyiv suburb briefly held by Russia before its northern offensive was routed in March, Harding traces the miserable fate of Volodymyr Cherednichenko, a 26-year-old electrician who was abducted, tortured and murdered by Russian troops. His mother and aunt, who risked their lives to search for him, last saw him under interrogation, his arm broken, covered in blood, sobbing that he knew nothing. He was found alone a few days later, shot through the ear in a filthy basement, one of at least 1,400 Ukrainians to die in the area.During World War II, there was a slogan in the Soviet Union that said, “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” The soldiers who died did so for the U.S.S.R. and for Stalin. […] Now the Russians are dying, “For the Motherland, for Putin”. Ukrainians die only for their Motherland, for Ukraine. Ukrainians don’t have a tsar to die for. […] Ukraine is a country of free people. Though Kurkov holds a Ukrainian passport, he was born in Russia. Writing in both Russian and Ukrainian for most of his life has opened him up to criticism from both sides. Ever on the lookout for historical parallels to explain the present, Kurkov has written in defense of writers like The Master and Margarita author Mikhail Bulgakov after members of Ukraine’s national writers’ union called for the renaming of Bulgakov’s family home, which is now a literary museum in Kyiv.

Diary of an Invasion – Deep Vellum Diary of an Invasion – Deep Vellum

I have been thinking about that Makariv bread for several days now – remembering the taste. Only now, while remembering, I sense the taste of blood on my lips, like when I was a child and someone split my lip in a fight. We started talking every day, probably from November or December last year, about whether the war would come or not," Kurkov says. "I was sure there would be an escalation - that Russia would go for the whole of The Donbas - but not an all-out war. Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov is strongest when he writes on cultural matters. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP Taken together, this is not only a chronicle of Russian aggression in Ukraine but a chronicle of how the war imposed by Russia – and Russia’s attempt to destroy Ukraine as an independent state – have contributed to the strengthening of Ukrainian national identity.Having registered on TikTok to follow the account of artillery officer Tetyana Chubar, I have started worrying about her too. I am willing her to emerge victorious from each new artillery duel and I would gladly support her quest to paint the self-propelled cannon pink all over – albeit after the war, of course. I think this will not only be her biggest reward but will be the icing on the cake for all her TikTok followers." However I decided to give it a chance. There were quite a few things within the historical context provided I actually didn't know. Even though I kept guard, looking out for hidden pro-russian beasts, I was compelled by the delivery. I loved the rational explanations to somewhat complex reality it has become way too easy to simplify, the labor and emotional resilience this takes is commendable. As of September 2023 the events of the book may be a bit outdated, but the context is nevertheless invaluable and can provide a very good understanding especially to westerners who might not have followed the events of the war so closely. 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 What about the part played by Europe? President Zelenskiy’s wife has told us that inflation and rising gas bills are a small price to pay if they mean freedom for Ukraine. “The role of Europe isn’t crucial, but it’s almost crucial,” he says. He notes that France and Germany have not yet delivered the military help they promised (though pressure is now mounting on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor). “Without Britain and America, we wouldn’t be where we are.” The last time he was in the UK, Ukrainian flags were everywhere; this time, there are far fewer around. “I hope people aren’t going to start displaying Russian flags as they worry about their bills,” he says, with a smile. The west should remember that Russian agents are good at stirring dissent favourable to their country: “Yesterday, 70,000 pro-Russia demonstrators were on the streets in Prague.”

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Despite the destruction, morale remains good, he says. His 25-year-old daughter recently returned to Kyiv from London to join her brother, and is now looking for a job. On February 24, 2022, all citizens of Ukraine found that their lifetime had been cut brutally in two, into the period “before the war” and that “during the war”. Of course, we all hope that there will be a period “after the war as well”. 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. Russians were vertical in their thinking, always looking feudally upwards,” he concludes. “Ukrainians were horizontal – a collective or superorganism. This millions-strong, decentralised network was working tirelessly towards a shared and shimmering goal: victory.” Kurkov's diary first came out online. I'd read parts of it and found it insightful and I'd wanted to read it properly. Now I'm glad to have read it from the beginning. The diary is insightful in the way it describes the events that led up to the war. It delves into a bit of history and it is very informative to read. It is also inspiring in the way it describes how ordinary Ukrainians have continued to live their everyday life inspite of the war and show everyday acts of heroism. It also describes the kindness of strangers, people who help others in need because they've been displaced because of the war. Kurkov himself is living in a stranger's apartment after he had moved away from his home, and his landlady tells him that he can stay in the apartment however long he wants and he can use everything that is there in her home. His own kids help refugees everyday. This is how the world survives, a country runs, because of the kindness of strangers.Best known in Britain for his top-selling novel Death And The Penguin, though he was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Kurkov is a proud Ukrainian so is well-placed to understand how Putin's war has severed the two countries' once strong cultural and emotional connections.