I got 'Diary of an Invasion' by Andrey Kurkov as a present from one of my favourite friends. I loved all of Kurkov's books that I've read before and so was looking forward to reading this one. 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." As if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian National character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for love of life.” For several days now, Ukrainian Facebook has been boiling over with the joy resulting from this victory. Ukrainians joke that Putin woke up last Sunday morning and was horrified to hear that Ukraine had won. It took him a while to realise that Ukraine had won the Eurovision, not the war – not yet. The book is dedicated to the soldiers of the Ukrainian army. The writing focused on the unique ways the war affects life for Ukrainians, while highlighting Ukrainian history and cultural figures, and condemning Putin. The ‘journal entries’ range from 12/29/21 to 7/11/22, giving a look at the anticipation of the beginning of hostilities and what is clear now to be only the first several months of war; all the while Kurkov wrote hopefully of an end. I too still hope Ukrainian victory is near.

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

He points out that historical truth and trauma are returned to the people through works of art, literature, and cinema. But then, Ukraine is a country of many shades of political opinion - there are some 400 registered parties - and this rampant individualism, Kurkov says, is at the heart of the nation's steadfast opposition to Russia. The day before the start of the war, our children, including our daughter who had flown in from London, had gone with their friends to the beautiful city of Lviv in western Ukraine. They wanted to visit the cafes, museums, the medieval streets of the old centre. We decided to join them. The journey of 420km took 22 hours. The traffic jams varied in length, from 10 to 50 miles. A vivid, moving and sometimes funny account of the reality of life during Russia's invasion' -- Marc Bennetts, The Times 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."

Summary

He is probably the number one foreign personality of the year. He's appreciated, he's loved," explains Kurkov. "When he resigned there were lots of jokes on Ukrainian Facebook saying we should ask Boris to come and be our Prime Minister. In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, Andrey Kurkov writes about recycling. While over 3,000 Russian tanks have been destroyed since the beginning of the latest war in Ukraine, it’s the smaller scrap metal and artillery shell casings that artists have focused on painting for European auctions that have raised money for the Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid. The war offers other opportunities for recycling in the forms of historical figures, renamed places, and myths about national identity. 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. 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 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.

Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Book Review Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov | Book Review

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) On 24 February 2022, the first Russian missiles fell on Kyiv. At five in the morning, my wife and I were awakened by the sound of explosions. It was very hard to believe that the war had begun. That is, it was already clear that it had, but I did not want to believe this. You have to get used psychologically to the idea that war has begun. Because from that moment on, war determines your way of life, your way of thinking, your way of making decisions.Kurkov also explores the role of the church in the current war, the Moscow Patriarchate versus the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as well as the linguistic identity and forced aggressive russification that has occurred throughout the history in Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe. In his new book, a version of the diary he has been writing since Russia invaded his country last February, the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov writes, among other things, of soup. It is July and on the cultural front, where fighting with Russia has also been “very active”, there is at last good news for Ukraine: Unesco has just registered the culture of Ukrainian borscht as part of its intangible heritage. Kurkov, like the rest of his countrymen and women, is thrilled. Apparently, the world disagrees with Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, who has repeatedly tried to defend Russian borscht from the “encroachment of Ukrainian nationalists”. 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. This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. Paraphrasing Kurkov himself, at some point you start looking for internal enemies. And that's understandable.

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

We have a small garden and we hope that we can plant potatoes and carrots for ourselves. For us it is a hobby, but what kind of hobby can you have during a war? If the Ukrainian army manages to drive the Russian military away from our region, we will try to return to Lazarevka, to live a normal life again. Although the term "normal life" now seems but a myth, an illusion. In actuality, there can be no normal life for my generation now. Every war leaves a deep wound in the soul of a person. It remains a part of life even when the war itself has ended. I have the feeling that the war is now inside me. It is like knowing that you live with a tumour that cannot be removed. You cannot get away from the war. It has become a chronic, incurable disease. It can kill, or it can simply remain in the body and in the head, regularly reminding you of its presence, like a disease of the spine. 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."This erasure of history, memory and fact is, Kurkov says, key to the enduring power of the Kremlin, whoever may be lodged there, whether Czar, Stalin or Putin. 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. Kurkov’s contemporaneous account begins not with the invasion but with the build-up, the daily ups and downs of a country on the brink of what might be extinction, or maybe just another round in a grinding cycle of Russian threats and detente. Often meandering, sometimes unfocused, his exposition of Ukrainian politics and culture at times seem unsure of its intended readership – domestic or foreign? – but there is always much of interest. Not least, the extent to which actor-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was seen, before the invasion, as too soft on Putin and too easily distracted by his feud with his own predecessor, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Diary of an Invasion' is Andrey Kurkov's diary written during the ongoing war in Ukraine. It starts a few months before the war and describes the events leading up to the war and Kurkov's own everyday, personal experiences. It ends at a time a few months after the start of the war. The diary runs for around six months. Around the time the diary ends, the expectation was that the war will get over before winter or latest by spring. But now we know that the war has dragged on into the second year with no end in sight. Kurkov says in his epilogue that he is continuing to work on this diary and we can expect a sequel.

Andrey Kurkov: from novelist to Ukraine’s travelling spokesman

My friends in Lviv no longer pay any attention to the warnings and no longer run out of their houses to look for bomb shelters. They are tired of being afraid. The disappearance of fear is a strange wartime symptom. Indifference to your own destiny sets in and you simply decide that what will be will be. Still, it remains hard for me to understand the attitude of parents who allow their small children to play nearby to a multi-storey building while shells are hitting other buildings not so very far away. Is it possible to think this way about your own children too – what will be will be?" In fact, we did not really think much about what to take with us. We thought that we would go to the village, not a great distance from Kyiv, and would return quite soon. I think this is always the case at the start of a war. 24 March 2022 on big explosions, when nothing remains, no identification is possible - forever missing [entertainment center in Kremenchuk] I highly recommend Diary of an Invasion, especially to those unfamiliar with the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. I would also encourage you to first read a good history book of Ukraine.A dramatic experience makes for a dramatic perception of the future. But, as if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian national character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for the love of life. 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. Kulturen spelar en viktig roll i Ukraina och Ryssland har genom historien upprepade gånger försökt utplåna den och dess kulturutövarna. Precicionsbomber har under detta krig till exempel bombat historiskt viktiga konstnärers och författares hem.