Grey Bees
A captivating, heartwarming story about a gentle beekeeper caught up in the war in Ukraine
Published on 5. August 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-85705-935-2 (ISBN)
Description
Ukraine's most famous novelist dramatises the conflict raging in his country through the adventures of a mild-mannered beekeeper.
"A warm and surprisingly funny book from Ukraine's greatest living novelist" Charlie Connelly, New European Books of the Year
Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the war, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, his "frenemy" from his schooldays.
With little food and no electricity, under ever-present threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace.
This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.
But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
"A warm and surprisingly funny book from Ukraine's greatest living novelist" Charlie Connelly, New European Books of the Year
Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the war, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, his "frenemy" from his schooldays.
With little food and no electricity, under ever-present threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace.
This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.
But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Reviews / Votes
A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami. -- Phoebe Taplin * Guardian. * A post-Soviet Kafka. -- Colin Freeman * Daily Telegraph. * Kurkov draws us with deceptive ease into a dense complex world full of wonderful characters. -- Michael Palin. A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut -- Ian Sansom * Spectator. * This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour, has written a modern-day odyssey, with a return that is ambiguously hopeful. -- India Lewis * Arts Desk * Strange and mesmerising . . . In spare prose, Ukraine's most famous novelist unsparingly examines the inhuman confusions of our modern times and the longing of the warm-hearted everyman that is Sergeyich for the rationality of the natural world. -- John Thornhill * Financial Times * A warm and surprisingly funny book from Ukraine's greatest living novelist. -- Charlie Connelly * New European Books of the Year * Carries top notes of Beckett and Pinter, along with a slug of Kafka. * Strong Words. * Sergey is at once a war-weary adventurer and a fairy-tale innocent . . . His naive gaze allows Kurkov to get to the heart of a country bewildered by crisis and war, but where kindness can still be found . . . Translated by Boris Dralyuk with sensitivity and ingenuity. -- Uilleam Blacker * Times Literary Supplement *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quercus Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 193 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
250 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85705-935-2 (9780857059352)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Andrey Kurkov
Grey Bees
A captivating, heartwarming story about a gentle beekeeper caught up in the war in Ukraine
E-Book
11/2020
1st Edition
MacLehose Press
€4.49
Available for download
Persons
Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received "hundreds of rejections" and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev was followed by the novels The Bickford Fuse, Grey Bees, and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv (longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023), as well as his non-fiction work Diary of an Invasion (2022). BORIS DRALYUK is an award-winning translator and the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He taught Russian literature for a number of years at UCLA and at the University of St Andrews. He is a co-editor (with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski) of the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, and has translated Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, as well as Kurkov's The Bickford Fuse. In 2020 he received the inaugural Kukula Award for Excellence in Non-fiction Book Reviewing from the Washington Monthly.