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Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker prize, the newly translated novel by Ukraine’s leading author is, in today’s context, poignantly playful and ebullientAndrey Kurkov – Ukraine’s most celebrated living author – has stopped writing fiction. Since Russia’s full-blown invasion last year, he has become a roving ambassador for his country and its embattled people and culture. Kurkov’s reports on the war have appeared in newspapers and magazines across Europe and the US, including in the Guardian and the New Yorker. Radio 4 has broadcast his work as Letter from Ukraine.Last autumn, Kurkov published his Diary of Invasion. It is a vivid personal journal and a portrait of a nation struggling against extinction. He recounts his own dramatic exit from Kyiv as enemy tanks approached, on 24 February 2022, and describes the plight of Ukrainians, displaced and under attack. They are, he notes, different from Russians: self-organising, democratic and anarchistic. He’s currently penning a second volume. Continue reading...