Until Russia attacked Ukraine at the end of February, there was a gray zone on the border between the two countries, where fighting had been going on for years, 430 kilometers long, a few kilometers wide at most, mostly deserted by civilians – and yet people still lived there.
One of them is the beekeeper Sergei from Andrei Kurkov's latest novel Graue Bienen, which was published in German in February 2021.
Sergei doesn't care who is shooting at whom around him and for what reasons.
He tries to coexist with war.
But because the unrest seems to be spoiling his honey, he wants to give his bees a rest for a summer and sets out on a journey.
On July 2nd, Andrej Kurkow was a guest at the Frankfurt LiteraTurm festival with his novel Graue Bienen.
In an interview with Jürgen Kaube, the Ukrainian author, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1961, talks about his travels to the Donbass, the Ukrainian and Russian languages, the cultural heritage that is hardly known even in his own country and about writing under the impression of the war.
"Grey Bees" by Andrej Kurkow was published by Diogenes, has 448 pages and costs 14 euros as a paperback.
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