Paris
- Stumbling in his steps "like a snail", he began his literary career, so that he was distributing his first novels by himself to libraries and public transport, and then soon settled in his walk "like a penguin", and his works began to be popular with readers, and his novel "Bickford's World" was nominated. 1993 Russian Booker Prize.
With the publication of his novel "The Penguin" in 1996, which was widely revered and a great success, and was translated into many international languages;
He was able to soar high like "bees", and achieve the international fame he aspired to, and was able to taste the honey of his fatigue and witness his patience, after his works became sought after by the largest international publishing houses, and at the same time were published in several languages in the most important European and Western capitals.
This is the great Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov, whose tumultuous life, thrilling career, and chameleon-like character resemble the story of his protagonists and problematic novels.
At the beginning of his life, Kurkov worked as an editor in a specialized magazine, a prison guard in Odessa, and a traveling photographer, and his experience developed from writing children's stories to writing scripts and films, before becoming a famous writer and dedicating himself to writing novels.
The owner of the wonderful "Penguin" was born in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in 1961, and at the age of two his family moved to live in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where he studied and graduated from the Faculty of Languages.
In addition to writing children's stories, which he started his career with and thanks to which he won many awards in Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov excelled in screenwriting, and wrote more than 25 "scripts" for successful fiction and documentaries.
This led the European Film Academy in Berlin to choose him as the best screenwriter in 1997, after he wrote the script for "Siddiq Al Marham", based on his novel "Dear Friend of the Late," published in the same year.
Chance and fate played its wisdom with this writer, whose novels are characterized by scathing irony and black humor mixed with symbolic surrealism that is not exaggerated.
His most famous novel, The Penguin, was published in 1996, two weeks before the collapse of what was known as the Soviet Union, and after a publisher from Zurich sent him a contract by fax - as he recounts in one of his dialogues - within two weeks he became a writer from the former Soviet Union, and his name became available on List of bestsellers in Europe.
In addition to the dark irony that characterizes his work, his novels named after animals and featuring animal characters became a hallmark of Kurkov's creative project, where he caught readers' attention with novels such as "Penguin", "Chameleon", "Snail Law" and finally "The Gray Bee".
The novel "The Penguin" was published in 1996 and received wide response and great success and was translated into many international languages (Al-Jazeera)
His other novels, published by him, were also met with the same success, such as: "Cuban Night", "The President's Last Love" and "Janan Uchakov", and his novel "The Favorite Song of a Global Citizen" won in Germany the award of the great German writer "Heinrich Böll".
Kurkov's works have been translated into more than 35 international languages, such as: English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Swedish, Spanish and Arabic, and today he is the best-selling author not only in Eastern Europe, but in all of Europe.
On the occasion of his French and European tour, following the release of the French and English translation of his new novel "Grey Bees", which takes place in a small village in the Donbass region (eastern Ukraine), where the pro-Russian rebels declared the independence of the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014, Al Jazeera Net had this Private conversation with writer Andrey Kurkov.
In this lengthy meeting, Kurkov talked about the reasons for writing this novel, the secret of naming his novels after animals, and the contradiction that governs his character as a Ukrainian writer who speaks and writes in Russian.
He also spoke about Ukrainian writers and intellectuals who volunteered to fight at the front, and of course about the psychological and creative effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on him, and about this conflict between "enemy brothers", which he said goes back 400 years.
The dialogue also touched on Kurkov's relationship with Arabic literature, which he asserted deserves a more present position in Europe, and pointed out his great admiration for Al-Maarri as the first Arab poet and writer to discover him when he was writing poetry in his early days. Here is the conversation.
Your new novel, "Grey Bees", takes place in the Donbas region, where pro-Russian rebels declared the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014.
The novel "Grey Bees" takes place in 3 locations: in the Gray Zone, in the south of Ukraine under Ukrainian control, and in the annexed Crimea.
The novel was written in 2017. At that time about 200 books, documentaries and fiction films about the war in Donbass have already been published, but nothing has been written about the lives of the civilian population who remained in the war zone.
Not a single book was published about life in Crimea, or even about its annexation.
I decided to give a voice to the people of the gray area, because these people were forgotten twice.
Unlike the Ukrainians who ended up in lands occupied by the Russians and the separatists, the gray-zone residents had no access to pensions, medical care, or even ordinary grocery stores.
There was nothing in the gray area, no pharmacies, no local authorities, no gas, no electricity;
So it seemed to me important to talk about these people, regardless of their reasons for not leaving, and why they stayed home when the war broke out.
The novel "Grey Bees" translated into French (Al Jazeera)
What is the importance, symbolism and backgrounds of choosing places and their memory in your creative work in general?
The location and location of the novel often determines the plot and story itself, as well as the characters' attitudes and actions.
I try not to write stories that could happen in any city and in any country.
My stories in general are signed.
Usually the scene in my novels is my hometown of Kyiv, but I have also written a novel about my other favorite city, Lviv.
I am now writing a series of novels about life in Kyiv in 1919 during the Civil War.
Back then - as now - the Russian Bolsheviks tried to take over Ukraine.
It took them 4 years to seize it and declare the creation of the Ukrainian SSR.
The atrocities committed by the Red Army in and around Kyiv at that time were the same as during this war that the Russian Federation has been waging since February 24 of this year.
To what extent can the novel “The Gray Bee” be considered in one way or another as an expression of the war of the “enemy brothers” Russia and Ukraine, through the contradictory and unequal friendship between the two protagonists, Sergeych and Pashka, which refers us directly to the enmity and war of Kyiv and Moscow?
Actually, I wasn't thinking like that when I was working on the novel;
Any human relationship is complex because people are different when they are individuals.
What can happen between people should not happen between states, as they are supposed to be governed by the most educated and rational people.
Of course, the reality is different, and when a country behaves like a drunk neighbor the results are often negative and disastrous.
Neighbors are not always "brothers".
We have 400 years of Ukrainian-Russian conflict, Russia has always been trying to dominate and wants to tell Ukrainians what to do, and it has banned the Ukrainian language dozens of times starting with the decrees of Peter the Great.
The duality of the two protagonists and their hidden conflict refer us to larger and deeper symbolic wars that are present in the body of the novel. What is your reading of this war and its dimensions?
Is it a military-political war or a cultural and identity war within the framework of the conflict of identities and cultures that the American thinker Samuel Huntington preached in his book “The Clash of Civilizations”?
It is a Russian war against Ukrainian identity.
A war to destroy Ukraine and remove it from the map of Europe, to include it in the map of the new Soviet Union.
There are already new "Happy Together" posters printed in Russia showing all the peoples of the former Soviet Union reuniting in one country.
This is Putin's last dream, and the legacy he wants to leave behind.
There is no "civilization" in this war, it is also a war of two mentalities: Ukrainian individualism, anarchist mentality against the Russian-Soviet collective mentality.
The Ukrainian mentality was almost completely suppressed in Soviet times through artificial starvation, deportation, persecution, and "russification" by replacing the Ukrainian language with Russian.
In the past 30 years the Ukrainian mentality has also returned with the help of the Ukrainian language it has regained its foundations.
You lived and studied in Kyiv and you are keen to represent the Ukrainian culture, but at the same time you write and speak in Russian and you were born in St. Petersburg, Russia. How do you live this contradiction and contradiction in your personality?
And how do you view this ambiguous identity between Russian and Ukrainian that distinguishes you?
Is it a source of wealth or misery?
Do you consider yourself a "gray" writer?
I am one of the many Russian language writers in Ukraine, but I also write other kinds of non-fiction books and Ukrainian children's stories.
I speak Ukrainian as well as some other languages.
My identity is Ukrainian because the Ukrainian mentality and identity is not actually based on the Ukrainian language.
It is based on the attitude of freedom and will.
For Ukrainians, freedom is more important than stability or money. For Russians, stability and comfort are more important than freedom;
That is why Ukrainians always protest when they are unhappy, while Russians are silent and always waiting for gifts from their czars.
Going deeper, my identity is that of Ukrainian speakers of Russian, but I see no contradiction in this;
I have the same thoughts as Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians, or almost the same thoughts.
Ukrainians like to disagree with each other, and so do I.
Andrei Kurkov's novels have been translated into many international languages (Al Jazeera)
Where does imagination begin and where does reality end in your fiction?
How do you live and explain this ambiguous relationship between reality and imagination?
Bring us into your secret writing room.
The writer lives in two different worlds at the same time;
In a world that lives a real life: with its problems, with its family, with society.
And in another world he lives the imaginary life of his heroes, both made-up and actually existing.
I started writing in the Soviet era, and after I was repulsed by the truth and angered by reality, I went to the world of fiction.
However, I still scoff at Soviet reality;
The current dramatic events hold my attention so strongly that I have no thoughts on the world of narrative and fiction, but I dream of returning to work on a novel set in Kyiv in 1919, which I stopped writing at the start of the war.
How do you deal with your fictional characters after their creation?
Do you restrict it and be tyrannical and strict with it according to a clear artistic narrative approach, or do you loosen the hook for it and give it complete freedom to develop and dive into the depths of events?
For me the main thing is to create independent characters who do not need advice and guidance, I am neither a dictator nor a film director, and I do not treat my characters with this logic.
When characters have their own principles and states of mind, they act according to their own logic.
My job is to ensure that the reasoning and motivation behind their actions does not conflict with their principles, customs, and beliefs.
While you chose to struggle with pen and writing in order to champion the cause of your country, a number of Ukrainian writers and intellectuals chose to take up arms and participate in the war. How do you view this issue?
What are your comments on the writers who take up arms to support the causes of their country?
Which is more effective: the struggle with the word and the pen or the military struggle with the gun?
Each writer chooses his own way and expression when his country is in danger.
We have heroes and traitors among Ukrainian writers in this war;
I know many young writers who volunteered for the front, among them Marcian Kamish, who recently became famous in Italy and France for his novel about the Chernobyl zone, and while participating in the war and fighting, this novel is being prepared for publication in the United States;
Such writers inspire me and command my respect and admiration.
There is a writer and critic from Kyiv named Yuri Volodarsky whose age does not allow him to leave the country, he is forced to stay and submit to mobilization, but he somehow left for Israel and is now unlikely to return to Ukraine.
There is also a former poet and professor at the Kyiv Pedagogical University, Yevgenia Belchenko, who moved to Moscow before the war, and from there, at the request of the Russian Special Services, attracted and organized a group of pro-Russian Kyiv residents and assigned them the task of monitoring military installations in Kyiv, sending GB coordinates their own to Moscow.
For me, I try to do the best I can by speaking and writing texts and articles in which I explain not only the causes of this war, but also the essence of Ukrainian history, and help foreign audiences understand that they know nothing about Ukraine and know a lot about Russia, and that they should correct This imbalance.
Tell us about your experience of this war and its psychological, physical and creative effects on you and your pen in the short and long term?
Will your next novel be about this war?
How does the creator receive and how does he live such tragedies and wars?
How does it affect it internally?
I haven't written a novel about this war yet;
This does not mean that I will never write it.
The impetus to write a novel about war can come at any moment and in any place.
I had not intended to write Gray Bees until I met a young refugee businessman from Donetsk in Kyiv, who told me that every month he drove his car to the front line to pick up medicines and everything needed and needed by 7 families living in a small village there, without shops or transportation infrastructure.
Yes, I am now living in a time of war, watching the news and following the echoes of the front and the front lines day and night.
I am worried about my acquaintances on the front lines, and those I do not know either.
Every day I call friends from Kharkiv and other cities.
Every sad news about the new Ukrainian victims of the war hurts me, and that pain can eventually write a novel on its own, and become a book in itself.
But what would this book look like?
I don't know, and I won't know until it's written.
Andrei Kurkov said that one day he would write a novel about the current Russian war on Ukraine (French)
Do you think that European and Western countries are remiss in Ukraine's cultural right and are ignorant of its historical and human depth, and that the competition in providing military and financial aid is just political bidding and entanglement of Ukraine with the "Russian big brother";
Service to Western European and American interests?
European politicians talk often and loudly about helping Ukraine.
In the current situation, most European leaders promise more to Ukraine than they do, because their statements and promises of assistance are often directed to the internal public rather than to the Ukrainians.
This is why Germany was so slow to deliver its promised military aid at the beginning of the war, and that is why news of military aid from France usually consists of about 4 or 6 howitzers, and Belgium gives money, not weapons.
Europe is still trying to balance Ukraine and Russia, between democratic values and the advantages of the capitalist market, and it is difficult to change this situation.
Winter is coming soon and Europeans will start protesting against rising gas and electricity prices, and will start asking their politicians to take a more flexible approach to sanctions against Russia.
I do not know how European politicians will act in this situation.
At the geopolitical level, the Ukrainian-Russian War is really a war waged by Russia against the United States and Europe, which is Russia's war to return to "superpower" status and be able to claim control of Africa, Latin America, the Arctic, etc.
Hence aid from the United States and Great Britain in contrast to aid from Germany and other European countries;
Come faster, more efficient and effective.
Yes, this war is a "three in one" war, but for the Ukrainians it is a war for the independence of Ukraine and for the right to their own culture and identity.
Your novels that include animal characters and are titled with animal names, such as “Penguin”, “Chameleon”, “Snail Law” and finally “Grey Bee” have become a hallmark of your creative project. Was the idea spontaneous or was it intended from the start?
And what is your deep philosophy on this employment of animals in your business?
Children and animals are always innocent, and their actions can be predicted because they act according to natural instinct, while adults act according to their level of morals and beliefs;
Therefore, it is not possible to predict what they will do.
In fact, animals appear in my novels and stories for a different reason;
When I was a child I had many pets and almost all of them died, sometimes through my fault or negligence.
I started writing poetry at the age of seven after the death of two hamsters.
I had 3 rats, and when there was only one left, I wrote the first poem of my life about the loneliness of a hamster who had lost his friends.
Two weeks later the latter also died, falling from the balcony of our apartment on the fifth floor.
So I guess the animals entered my writing because of a subconscious feeling of guilt, it was as if I wanted to give these animals a literary life instead of a real life that ended so quickly.
Why did the animals included in your novels not hear, speak, or see, only participate in the narrative event in an episodic and not a deep core way?
Animals are for me the mirror of normal life being normal;
So I don't want to say it in my novels even though I did say it and make it speak in my children's books.
But as far as novels are concerned, I don't need magic or the miraculous to say what I want to say, I just need the reader's attention.
The reader, if attentive, accepts the existence of animals as part of reality, and makes connections between all the characters in his imagination, including the 'literary' animals.
Classical Arabic literature was one of the first literatures that used animals as a mount to deliver its messages to the reader in literary masterpieces such as “The Animal” by Al-Jahiz and “The Lost Pigeon Collar” by Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi. Do you have knowledge of Arabic literature and Arab culture?
What do you think about the contribution of this literature throughout history to the enrichment of human culture?
Perhaps I do not know enough about Arabic literature, but when I was writing poetry I read some Arabic poetry in Russian translation, and one of the first writers and poets I loved at the time was Abu Ala Al-Maari, whose work was translated by Arseny Tarkovsky, one of the best Russian translators and poets.
There was a verse about sheep trying to be alert and alert, but nevertheless they could not detect the wolves' plans.
Of course, I know the poetry of Adonis and the novels of Naguib Mahfouz.
I remember how many times Gabriel García Márquez mentioned in his interviews his love for Scheherazade's stories and The Thousand and One Nights.
Frankly, I think that Arabic literature should be more present in Europe.
Andrei Kurkov during a photo shoot at the Harborfront Literature Festival in Hamburg this September (Getty Images)
Your novel "The President's Last Love", which was published in 2004, in which you made President Putin a major figure, was banned in Russia, and the rest of your novels were also banned. Tell us about the backgrounds of your writing this novel?
And how do you look at that?
I wrote this novel because I once thought I had never seen a happy Ukrainian president before.
In fact, when this novel was published we only had a second president in Ukraine.
But anyway, most of them seemed very unhappy, and I wondered: Why do so many people want to enter politics in order to be president, and then be so confused as if someone forced them into their decision and positions?
This was the starting point of the novel.
Censorship is present in all societies;
It is present in the United States, of course in Russia, and now also in Ukraine, but only on Russian books with anti-Ukrainian content or messages.
Societies are unable to regulate the "thin line" question, while dictatorships and authoritarian regimes do so easily and in a very effective manner, everything critical, including critical documentarians, writers and journalists, is suppressed.
Banned books usually find their readers anyway, and they help society read the nature of the regime that imposed censorship, but it takes time, and sometimes even after democratization the dictatorship and censorship return just as they did in Russia.
In fact, now everything that is forbidden is easily available on the Internet;
So banning books or magazines doesn't make any sense, it's just a reminder of who rules and imposes their will and censorship, and things get worse when writers and journalists are tortured or imprisoned, but today I'm happy with how the international community reacts to such situations.
Today we have 14 journalists imprisoned in Crimea, annexed by the Russian authorities.
The main thing is not to forget them, keep their names in the media, talk about them.
Since 2021, he has kept correspondence with Nariman Jalil, a Crimean Tatar journalist and politician who was imprisoned a year ago on trumped-up charges.
Other Ukrainian writers are in contact with other imprisoned journalists.
We will demand their release.
We Ukrainian writers believe that writers in general should be advocates of human rights and should fight against censorship and persecution of those who criticize the opinions and ideas of politicians and political systems.
Is the era of the organic intellectual who defends his ideas to the last breath over, and has we now lived in the era of the “great” intellectual who is content with a small greatness of power in the form of a small position in exchange for his silence and appeasement?
Is the voice of the intellectual today, as it was heard, for example, during the first and second world wars?
We stopped using the word "intellectuals" after it was abandoned by Russian liberals and intellectuals who claimed to be committed and then accepted gifts of power and money for their projects in exchange for their silence and loyalty to the system.
It concerns, for example, a "liberal" Russian theater director named Kirill Serebanikov, who accepted money from Putin's former chief adviser Vladislav Surkov, to direct Surkov's play.
Politicians in many countries realize that it is easier and cheaper today to buy intellectuals, including journalists and writers, than to confront them;
So they fight their battles and try to corner those who cannot be bought or corrupted.
Yes, I think intellectuals were more powerful and active in the two world wars, and their voices were heard better because they had more confidence.
The circumstances in which I wrote the novel “Dear Friend of the Late”, translated into Arabic in 2012, resemble the conditions of labor and the yearning for liberation from tyranny that the Arab world experienced, and later became known as the revolutions of the Arab Spring, so what do you think of these revolutions, and what are the similarities and differences between The Ukrainian "orange revolution" and the revolution of the Arab peoples?
I think that there are many similarities on the political level between the Arab Spring and the Ukrainian revolution, and if there are some differences, they are only cultural differences.
But the main reason was the same;
Societies are tired of corrupt politicians and need more control over their political systems and more reforms brought about by the new generation of politicians.
For Ukraine, this revolution changed the attitude of the people towards themselves and their country, and they realized that they could change things in the country.
Since then, politicians in Ukraine have feared street protests.
How do you view the tragedy and the Palestinian cause?
Do you feel sympathy for the Palestinian people who have been living in exile, injustice and displacement for decades, just as the Ukrainian people live today in the scourge of war and exile in various Europe?
I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, and I wish the Palestinians would have their own state so that they would be able to define the political framework for the life of their community.
I have met many Palestinians in my life in Ukraine and Europe, and I never imagined that in Europe I would meet more Ukrainian refugees than Palestinians or Syrian refugees.
Your novel "Dear Friend of the Late" has found a distinguished celebration and good acceptance in Arab cultural circles. Are there new contacts regarding the translation of your other novels into Arabic?
نُشرت روايتي الأكثر ترجمة "الموت والبطريق" في مصر منذ عدة سنوات على يد المترجم شريف بكر. في الوقت الحالي، لا توجد خطط لترجمة كتب أخرى إلى اللغة العربية، لكنني آمل أن يتم اختيار رواية "النحل الرمادي" من قبل أحد الناشرين العرب لترجمتها.
وقد ترجمت كذلك رواية "الموت والبطريق" ونشرت باللغة الفارسية في إيران ووجدت أصداء طيبة ونالت تقييمات جيدة جدا.
- كتبت الكثير من السيناريوهات لأفلام سينمائية ناجحة، واختارتك "أكاديمية الفيلم الأوروبي" أفضل كاتب سيناريو عام 1997، فهل ترى نفسك كاتب سيناريو ضل طريقه إلى الرواية؟ أم أنت روائي ضل طريقه إلى السينما؟ وكيف تنظر إلى علاقة الأدب بالسينما؟
علاقتي بالسينما معقدة نوعًا ما؛ بدأت كتابة السيناريوهات أواخر العصر السوفياتي لأنني لم أتمكن من نشر رواياتي بسبب الرقابة، بدأت ككاتب شبح للكاتب الشهير آنذاك وكاتب السيناريو كير بوليشيف، لأنني كنت مقيما في موسكو، لكنني سرعان ما عدت بعد ذلك إلى الكتابة باسمي الحقيقي.
كان أكبر نجاح لي هو السيناريو المبني على روايتي الخاصة "عزيزي صديق المرحوم" (فرنسا – أوكرانيا عام 1997) التي تم اختيارها من قبل أكاديمية السينما الأوروبية.
بعد ذلك كان للفيلم توزيع دولي، وكان حتى اليوم الفيلم الأوكراني الأكثر نجاحًا في الولايات المتحدة وكندا، حتى إنه تم شراء حقوق توزيعه بواسطة الشركة المعروفة "سوني بيكتشرز كلاسيك".
لاحقا عندما بدأت نشر رواياتي وكتبي، اهتممت أقل بكتابة السيناريو، ثم توقفت عن كتابته تمامًا. في الحقيقة تستغرق كتابة السيناريو وقتًا كبيرا، فضلا عن كونه عملا تعاونيا مع المنتج والمخرج السينمائي.
أفضل أن أكون كاتبا مستقلا، ووحدها كتابة الأدب تمنحني هذه الاستقلالية. يوجد أحيانًا تعايش جيد بين الأدب والسينما عندما يساعد الفيلم المقتبس من الرواية على إعطاء زخم أكبر لها، وتصبح أكثر أهمية وقراءة وانتشارا، لكن هذا من النادر أن يحدث.
- يقول الكاتب الروسي نيكولاي غوغول المولود قرب مدينة بولتافا في الشمال الشرقي لأوكرانيا: "الأدب الأوكراني المعاصر يسعى إلى الخروج من معطف الأدب الروسي". فإلى أي مدى استطاع الأدب الأوكراني المعاصر الخروج من معطف الأدب الروسي ومن فروة الدب الروسي؟
نيكولا غوغول بالنسبة لي كاتب أوكراني؛ لقد جلب إلى الأدب الروسي الفكاهة والسحر الذي لم يكن موجودًا هناك، ولكن روح كتبه أوكرانية تمامًا، ويختلف الأدب الأوكراني الحديث اختلافًا كبيرًا عن الأدب الروسي.
Russian literature, as in the Soviet era, is based on the classic tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and new Ukrainian literature is based on European traditions and "worldwide" classical Ukrainian literature, and on the works of authors who wrote in several languages, including Ukrainian, Polish, German, and Latin.
Like Hrihori Skovoroda, Paul Celan, Shlom Lahm, and Ivan Franco.
Soviet-Russian literature was very similar to Soviet-Ukrainian literature, because both were Soviet and well censored;
And that won't happen again.