Now 49, he is a beekeeper, who lives with his six hives in his house on Lenin Street, with no electricity or post and limited supplies (either brought to the village by the Baptists or arranged for by himself exchanging his honey for supplies in the next village), living a quiet life.

Kurkov handles the book’s solemn argument—how war destroys everyone’s lives—with a light touch and gently ironic humor that comes through beautifully in Boris Dralyuk’s translation, which alternates lush lyricism with wry humor . They are the ordinary people, those with only a vague stake in the conflict but mostly hoping it’ll be over so they can get back to regular life. The novel begins in the village of Little Starhorodivka, a place in the grey zone between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces from which everyone has fled except for Sergeyich and his neighbor, Pashka. He receives a visit from his former school rival Pashka, the only other resident left in the village.

But I suspect it’s moved on a little since then, although he always did tackle the big issues, albeit in a quirky way. Ein wirklich genialer Roman über einen Krieg auf europäischen Boden, der (noch) nicht in den Geschichtsbüchern steht, sondern weitgehend ohne größere Aufmerksamkeit der deutschen Öffentlichkeit seit 2014 andauert: der Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine in der Ostukraine im sogenannten Donbass, dem Donezbecken. Again and again, the most ostensibly simple exchanges in the book telescope to reveal moments of unexpected historical depth. I saw war becoming the norm, saw people trying to ignore it, learning to live with it as if it were a rowdy, drunken neighbor. Angesiedelt in der Zeit zwischen Spätwinter und Sommer 2016 legt der Autor seinen Fokus auf die "kleinen" Leute im damals bereits seit zwei Jahren schwehlenden Krieg in der Ukraine, er lässt die Lesenden an ganz alltäglichen Handlungen teilhaben: Am Zusammenleben in einem verlassenen Dorf, am Zurechtkommen ohne Strom, an der Selbstversorgung von Sergej und Paschka - und an der immerwährenden "Kriegsstille", wie sie der Protagonist selbst nennt.

Adott egy merőben neutrális tér, ahol a katonák (az "ukrók" éppúgy, mint a "mieink", vagyis az oroszok) csak távoli, testetlen entitások, akik a fejünk fölött lövik egymást. Just skimming your review of this for now as I have a copy of the book to read and would rather not know too much about it beforehand. Grey Bees is an ode to the lost simplicity of life and to all the solitary emphatic souls caught amid the horrors of the senseless suffering inflicted by people on their fellow human beings. In 1944, 180,000 Crimean Tatars were taken from their home at gunpoint and deported to Uzbekistan, with around 8,000 dying along the way. I remember being impressed by Death and the Penguin when it was first translated over twenty years ago.

It is a quiet novel that slowly progresses, but it never feels slow and instead just breaths to the rhythm of life. The identity is also discussed at length in the book, or rather the perception of the identity in terms of how we do or do not identify ourselves contrasted with the way others perceive us depending on their own background. Sergej Sergejitsch lebt im Donbass, in einem kleinen Dorf in der sogenannten Grauen Zone, im Kampfgebiet zwischen der ukrainischen Armee und prorussischen Separatisten. Andrey Kurkov (Andrej Kurkow, Andreï Kourkov, Андрей Юрьевич Курков) was born in Leningrad in 1961 and now lives in Kiev.