How Ukraine’s Greatest Novelist Is Fighting for His Country

On Feb. 25, the day after Russian bombs began falling on his country, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine’s most famous living writer, received a phone call at his home in central Kyiv. The call was from an old friend who had just got hold of some privileged information: Kurkov, a longtime critic of Vladimir Putin, was on a list of “pro-Ukrainian activists” drawn up by the Kremlin, whose forces could seize the capital in a matter of days.

He needed to get out.

As it happened, Kurkov was working on a novel about an earlier Russian invasion, the so-called Soviet-Ukrainian war of 1917-21.

Diverted from his historical fiction by history in the making, Kurkov has been on the move ever since.

He has dedicated himself to chronicling and contextualizing the war for foreign audiences.

“I think everybody should do what he can do best for the country,” he said recently. “What I can do is write and tell things, and that is what I am doing.” Read more

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