Andrey Kurkov wrote about Ukrainians caught up in war. Now he is one.

Andrey Kurkov is one of the most acclaimed Ukrainian writers of the post-Soviet era. The author of 19 novels, as well as television scripts and books for children, he is also a frequent commentator on Ukraine for European and American media. His 2018 novel, “Grey Bees,” has just been published in the United States. Mr. Kurkov and his family left their home in Kyiv the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. He exchanged email messages with the Monitor recently from western Ukraine, where the family is sheltering.  

What is life like for you now? 

We left Kyiv at the beginning of the war, on the second day, and moved to our village house 60 miles to the west. From there we moved to Lviv. It took 22 hours to drive 260 miles. Then we stayed in a small tourist hotel in the Carpathian mountains. Now we are in the Transcarpathian region. 

Are you doing any writing?

I was working on a novel but stopped after the Russian invasion. Now I write only articles and essays about what is happening in Ukraine. I am in touch with many of my friends in different cities and regions. Some of my friends and colleagues are in the occupied territories and there is no more connection with them. Russians take away computers and mobile phones from those they suspect to be an activist or intellectual.

You wrote “Grey Bees” in 2018, before the current crisis. The novel is set during the war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in 2014. What was the impetus for writing it?

In Kyiv I met many refugees from Donbas. One of them told me that he is driving once a month back to Donbas, to a village on the frontline, to bring seven families that remained there medicines and whatever they need, because they have no shops, no pharmacies, no infrastructure at all. Then I realized that there are thousands of people who are in the same situation in the gray zone between the positions of the Ukrainian Army and those of pro-Russian separatists. That was the reason to write the novel. By that time there were already more than 200 books about soldiers, but none about ordinary civilians caught up in the war. 

The two main characters in “Grey Bees,” a beekeeper and his neighbor, live in a war zone, but go about their daily lives. Have they simply adapted to war? 

People in Donbas are adapted to the war and try sometimes to ignore distant explosions. They can understand when the danger is approaching and only then react. They can differentiate many military sounds and different kinds of explosions.

Since the Russian invasion, have you seen a similar attitude in Ukraine?

It takes months to adapt to living in the dangerous situation of war. It happens when you become indifferent to your own fate and to everything else and you stop making plans for the future and stop dreaming.

What do you hope readers of “Grey Bees” learn about Ukraine today? 

They can see the war through the eyes of ordinary people of Donbas. They can understand the situation in Crimea after annexation. They can understand the mindsets of ordinary people for whom the war came as a great and horrible surprise. 

How has war, particularly since 2014, affected the literature produced in Ukraine?

Before 2014, Ukrainian literature was about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, but then it became very militant, very politically engaged. Now there are hundreds of books about the war, dozens of historical novels.  

It has been said that Ukrainian literature is one means of defiance in the face of imperial domination. Do you agree?

Yes, I agree, Ukrainian literature was, from 1991 [when the Soviet Union collapsed], independent from both the influence of Soviet literature and from Ukrainian politics. It developed sporadically and quickly became European. Russian literature remained in the Russian/Soviet tradition under the patronage of [President Vladimir] Putin’s administration. 

Why do you write your novels in Russian and not Ukrainian?

Literature in Ukraine is written in several languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, and Hungarian. My mother tongue is Russian. I am ethnically Russian, was born in Russia and grew up in Russian-speaking Kyiv. In Ukraine, my books are published in Russian and then translated into Ukrainian. My books are not published in Russia and were banned twice. Since 2014, it has been illegal to bring my books in Russian to sell in Russia. So I am one of many Ukrainian writers who writes in Russian.

What message would you most like to convey to the world about Ukraine and the current conflict?

Ukrainians and Russians are very different. For Ukrainians, freedom is more important than stability. For Russians, it is the opposite. Ukrainians change their presidents at each election, Russians keep their czars until the czar is dead. Ukrainians and Russians are not the same people, as Putin claims.

“Death and the Penguin,” one of your best known novels, features a penguin as a main character. Most of your novels have animals as characters. Why?

Animals are excellent natural protagonists. They help me to convey what I want to say about society, about the situation, about people. And they are very symbolic. Penguins live in groups, not pairs, so they need to be part of something bigger. They are like the Soviet people, who lost themselves after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.