Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev

Description: -16 C, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between the tents. Talked with rev-olutionaries. 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 Kiev, just five hundred 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 Yanukovcyh, 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.

Review: "Andrey Kurkov's Ukraine Diaries offer a unique personal insight into one of the world's most complex trouble spots. The fact that Kurkov lives in the heart of Kiev, and the fact that he can write so well, give an eloquence and immediacy to his account of day to day life in the teeth of a crisis. This is history, with feeling" -- Michael Palin "[Kurkov writes] in the style of an informed but convivial flaneur, and his entries crackle with irony and humour" -- Marcus Tanner Independent "Controlled rage and wry wit, nicely captured in Sam Taylor's translation... Kurkov's diaries are valuable" The Economist "As his diaries make clear, real life has outstripped his blackly comic fiction for surreal detail, political cynicism and latent menace" -- Ben Hoyle The Times, Book of the week "The power...lies in the interweaving of the extraordinary and the mundane" -- John Thornhill Financial Times


Author Biography: Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, 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 States.