Diary of an Invasion

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While the atrocities of the war described in this book did not come as a surprise having followed the extensive news coverage of the invasion of Ukraine, what really stuck me was how little we comprehend from afar the ‘small’, almost what feel like insignificant things in normal life, that are lost during war. Kurkov’s first entry in this diary is dated two months before the invasion begins, capturing a celebratory moment where anxiety about a possible war is eclipsed by New Year’s wishes for the future. Most Russians, he says, don’t want to know what the Kremlin did to Ukraine: they don’t even want to know what it did to Russia.

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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. 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. But while many younger Ukrainians are enthusiastic about this idea, older people are more conservative. Because of Kurkov’s explanatory style, I learnt so much about the region - its history, geography, economy, the reasons for the dynamics between neighbouring states, as well as its culture. The entries end in July, on a semi-hopeful note that Kurkov will continue writing and hope to publish his further thoughts at a later time.

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov – who has this year become one of the most articulate ambassadors to the West for the situation in his homeland.

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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. Books like this are rarely an easy read, but reading them to try and better understand the current Ukrainian experience feels the least we can do to support the Ukrainian flight for victory and freedom. They made their way between trucks and buses to reach our car and bundled themselves into the back seat, suitcase and all.The more than twenty million victims of the Gulag have been forgotten, which is why the Gulag and the Stalinist repressions have not become a historical trauma for the Russian people. 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. The council of the Pyotr Tchaikovsky conservatory in Kyiv, the country’s national music academy, recently met to discuss whether it should be renamed after the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko – and eventually decided against. Some concepts are polished and smoothed, some ideas are made more prominent while others are played down. Yes, it would of course be a better world if Putin, curse his cotton socks, had not built his inferiority complex up so much he invaded Ukraine, a country I had stumbled into entering and leaving six times each, and therefore this volume did not exist.

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Goodreads

Such are the adaptations of a culture at war, a thoroughly modern war that Kurkov examines through his own understanding of the history that led the Ukrainian people to where they are now. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. Harding, whose final chapter offers a brief summary of Ukraine’s dramatic autumn victories in Kharkiv and Kherson, but also of Russia’s recent nuclear brinkmanship, ends on an optimistic note. No Choice began as a cover story for the American magazine Mother Jones, where Andrews was formerly a reporter.It is interesting that Kurkov doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic about Zelensky (a native Russian speaker, just as Kurkov) before the invasion, and actually also in the remainder of the book there is no real indication that he has changed his views. Unlike Russia, the US may have no direct territorial ambitions but foreign wars feed its hunger to make and sell weapons. 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. Also featuring No Choice: Becca Andrews on the right to abortion, and Servants of the Damned by David Enrich. 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.

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

Molly and the Captain were the nicknames the painter Thomas Gainsborough gave to his two surviving daughters, Mary and Margaret. 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. It starts a few months before the war and describes the events leading up to the war and Kurkov's own everyday, personal experiences. I can imagine only one situation when pink camouflage might work, if the vehicle ever stopped in a field of pink roses. Precicionsbomber har under detta krig till exempel bombat historiskt viktiga konstnärers och författares hem.

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. It felt like it would be appealing to a broad variety of readers – those that have so far followed every single little detail of the war but also those who stopped keeping track at some point and would like to recreate a global picture. His most recent work, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens. Between descriptions of daily life as internally displaced people, as Kurkov and his wife became, to a certain extent, are his thoughts on Russia, Ukrainian culture, the role of memory, history and books.