The Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov was having dinner with friends at his home in Kyiv on the evening of 23 February 2022, the day before Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Within hours he was advised that his name probably featured on a Russian list targeting prominent Ukrainian figures for arrest, or worse, and he should leave the city. As Kurkov and his wife joined the thousands of Ukrainians who grabbed what possessions they could and headed to the west of the country, he began a stream of articles, speeches, interviews, broadcasts and other interventions – made at home and abroad – to explain the plight and position of his compatriots. He returned to Kyiv four months after the invasion, and the city has remained his base ever since for his continuing role as one of the best known and most assiduous advocates of a free and independent Ukraine.
Kurkov was 70 pages into a new novel when the invasion happened, but found that, “while I could produce quite a lot of journalism, I couldn’t write fiction”, he says. “Last summer I managed 30 more pages but then had another block. It somehow felt too guilty a pleasure to write fiction in a time of war. It felt like something sinful. To write a novel you also need to concentrate on the world of the novel, not on your reality. And the reality didn’t let me think about anything else. It was like being imprisoned by reality, checking the news every hour all day and then waking up several times a night to check it again.”
