26 Our Daily War

“A vivid, moving and sometimes funny account of the reality of life during Russia's invasion,” Marc Bennetts, The Times

“Uplifting and utterly defiant,” Matt Nixson, Daily Express

“No-one with the slightest interest in this war, or the nation on which it is being waged, should fail to read Andrey Kurkov,” Dominic Lawson, Daily Mail
 
“For centuries, attempts have been made to force Ukrainians to forget their native language, to stop singing Ukrainian songs and to abandon their history. For almost 400 years, Russia has been fighting against Ukrainian identity.”
 
Andrey Kurkov’s war diaries continue: A profound and deeply personal chronicle of life under siege.

In this second volume of his acclaimed war diaries, Ukraine’s greatest living writer bears witness to a nation enduring the unendurable. From his home in Kyiv, Kurkov captures the surreal and the life-shattering: children learning algebra in metro stations turned bomb shelters, holidaymakers sunbathing on mined beaches, and farmers sowing fields shadowed by missile strikes.

On its eastern borders, Ukrainian citizens are put into “filtration camps”, en route to Russia … or to execution. To the north, Belarusian forces press refugees into service as mine detectors.

This is a lived account – rich with startling vignettes, dark humour and devastating detail – of a country adapting, resisting, surviving. A child downloads movies to a smartphone to watch during nightly power cuts. An elderly Japanese man feeds the hungry in Kharkiv. A soldier carefully rehomes a swarm of bees. A winemaker uses scrap wooden shell crates to package gift sets. A Ukrainian gunner inscribes messages on shells and rockets aimed for Russia: “For Bakhmut”, he writes. The family of a journalist killed in the Donbas sells their home to open a bookshop in his memory.

Our Daily War is Kurkov at his most intimate and insightful: a record of resilience, heartbreak and fierce national pride. Urgent, humane, unforgettable, this is history as it happens, and as only Kurkov can write it.

“Andrey Kurkov [is] one of the most articulate ambassadors to the West for the situation in his homeland,” Sam Leith, Spectator

“Immediate and important … From the grim incredulity at Russians massing on the border to the displacement of millions of people, this is an insider's account of how an ordinary life became extraordinary. It is also about survival, hope and humanity,” Helen Davies, The Times

“Ukraine’s greatest novelist is fighting for his country,” Giles Harvey, New York Times
 
“The author's on-the-ground account is packed with surprising details about the human effects of the Russian assault ... His voice is genial but also impassioned, never more so than when deploring Putin's efforts to erase Ukrainian culture and history. Ukraine, he says, "will either be free, independent and European, or it will not exist at all". That's why the war has to be fought, with no concession of territory. And he remains quietly hopeful that it will be won,” Blake Morrison, Guardian