Diary of an Invasion

Winner of the NBCC Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize for Grey Bees When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov was forced to flee his adopted hometown of Kyiv. This journal is a harrowing record of the months leading up to and after the invasion, as Kurkov migrates to the Ukrainian countryside for shelter. In small villages, surrounded by other refugees, he pens incisive dispatches on the latest border conflicts and bombardments affecting his loved ones. These wartime entries ruminate on Ukraine‘s historic past and possibilities for its future. An avid political commentator, Kurkov has written for prominent English newspapers, delivered lectures, and been interviewed across Europe on the war in Ukraine. His most recent fictional work, The Silver Bone (2024), is a surrealist crime novel set in early 20th-century Kyiv, inspired by real-life police records Kurkov had access to.