Diary of an Invasion

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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. Kurkov is best known for his 1996 novel Death and the Penguin, a book that has been translated into more than 30 languages. When the war began, he was hard at work on a new novel, but he hasn’t touched it since. At first, he was too distracted and he missed his library, left behind in Kyiv. Then he started writing his diary, the phone began ringing and he found himself too busy being a voice for Ukraine out in the world: “It’s a big responsibility. I wish there were more like me.” But there are also, he knows, things he can say that might sound hollow if they came from a non-Ukrainian. Take culture. He believes that it is never more important than in a time of war, offering as evidence for this the fact that no sooner had the conflict started than Kyiv’s metro platforms were being used as free cinemas. “People cannot live without it,” he says. “It gives meaning to a person’s life. It explains to a person who he or she is and where he or she belongs.”

Invasion by Luke Harding and Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Invasion by Luke Harding and Diary of an Invasion by Andrey

Paraphrasing Kurkov himself, at some point you start looking for internal enemies. And that's understandable.Can war be a time for self-improvement, for self-education? Of course it can. At any age and in any situation, even in wartime, you can discover new aspects of life, new knowledge and new opportunities. You can learn to bake paskas in a damaged stove. You can get a tattoo for the first time in your life at the age of eighty. You can start learning Hungarian or Polish. You can even start learning Ukrainian if you did not know it previously." Both of Kurkov’s grandfathers were communists. One died fighting for the Soviet Army in 1943 while the other lived until 1980. Other relatives were sent to gulags. Of his older grandfather’s silence about these relatives, Kurkov says, “It turned out that I was protected from the dangerous past.” Yet, his willingness to interrogate this dangerous past is what informs nearly every one of his detailed descriptions of the people and places caught up in the war happening now.

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

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. 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. There are many fascinating characters who populate the story. There is Kurkov's friend Svetlana, who is not able to leave Kyiv. She sends a message to him – "I decided to say goodbye just in case. They have warned that there will be a terrible shelling of Kyiv. I'm going to stay in my flat. I'm tired of running through the basements. If anything happens, remember me with a smile." I cried when I read that. There is Tetyana Chubar, a 23-year old single mom. She is the commander of a self-propelled cannon (an armoured vehicle something like a tank) and she has four men under her command. She paints her nail yellow and blue, and she hopes to paint her combat vehicle pink one day. These are just two of the many fascinating, inspiring real-life characters who stride through the book.

Summary

When we became refugees, we left all our books in Kyiv. Now, since my first wartime trip into Europe, I have some books again – gifts from my English publisher. I’m wondering when I will be able to take those books home and add them to my library. In this difficult, dramatic time, when the independence of my country Ukraine is at risk, the works of the great Scottish writer Archibald Joseph Cronin, who brilliantly combined the talents of a doctor and a writer, help me a lot. I make use of all five volumes of his work, published in Moscow in 1994 by the Sytin Foundation publishing house. It does not matter what the stories are in these books. I do not read fiction now. I use the five volumes to rest my computer on, so that my Zooms and Skypes follow the rules of television, so that the laptop's camera is located at my eye level." 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.

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

He points out that historical truth and trauma are returned to the people through works of art, literature, and cinema.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. 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. A lot of discussion about I.D.P., himself included, and their relocation within Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe (latter mostly being women, children and pensioners; men under 60 who don’t have proof of enrollment in a foreign university or medical statement saying unfit for war are not allowed to leave the country) A few hours later, at 4.30am local time, Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles, air strikes and artillery rounds, and sent airborne forces and armoured columns on a smash-and-grab raid on Kyiv. In Diary of an Invasion, his own newly published account of the war so far, Kurkov wryly observes that at least Putin did not spoil his dinner party. Instead, Kurkov and his wife were woken by explosions in the small hours of the morning.

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov review — Ukraine’s

Many families also travel with other people's children, trying to make sure that all the seats in their cars are occupied. Every empty seat in a car going to the west of Ukraine is a life that was not saved." There are more manifestations of patriotism on Facebook than in the real world. I do not know the reason for that.” (75) Recently a strong wind of up to 70 k.p.h. has been blowing across Ukraine. A strong wind usually changes the weather and cuts off electricity simply by breaking the power cables. No electricity supply usually means a break in communication with the outside world - no Wi-Fi or T.V. and no way to charge a mobile telephone. All that remains is a candle and a book, just like two hundred years ago. As was the case then, a candle is more important than a book. And cheaper! When the electricity went off that night in hundreds of villages because of the wind, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians burrowed into the drawers of their tables and sideboards looking for candles. Everyone's world was reduced to the space that can be illuminated by a candle. Forced romance won out over high-tech reality." The first volume of his Diary Of An Invasion begins on December 29, 2021, with "Goodbye Delta! Hello Omicron!" - if only Covid was all Ukraine had to worry about - and ends in early July, before the recent successes of Ukraine's army, to whose soldiers Kurkov has dedicated the book.Probably the first important literary work to emerge from a conflict that appears likely to alter the course of world history, Diary of an Invasion is a thoughtful and humane memoir by one of Ukraine’s most prominent living authors." —Simon Caterson, The Sydney Morning Herald He was under the influence of this philosopher, Alexander Dugin, an advocate of the Eurasian policy (which considers Russia to be closer to Asia than Western Europe) based on anti-Western values. Russians have a collective mentality," he explains. "They used to have one tsar and he was the symbol of stability. For them, stability is more important than freedom.