Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev

An acclaimed novelist offers Ukrainian dispatches from the heart of Kyiv

-16°C, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between the tents. Talked with rev­olutionaries. They were weary today. The air was thick with the smell of old campfires.

Ukraine Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov’s first-hand account of the ongoing crisis in his country. From his flat in Kyiv, just 500 yards from Independence Square, Kurkov can smell the burning barricades and hear the sounds of grenades and gunshot. Kurkov’s diaries begin on the first day of the pro-European protests in November and describe the violent clashes in the Maidan, the impeachment of Yanukovych, russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the separatist uprisings in the east of Ukraine. Going beyond the headlines, they give vivid insight into what it’s like to live through—and try to make sense of—times of intense political unrest.

About the Author

Andrey Kurkov graduated from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, and worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odesa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world’s media, notably in the UK, France, Germany, and the U.S.