Andreï Kurkov is our guest this Monday, March 21. The immense Ukrainian writer spoke to us about his life, his people, his books and of course the war that is eating away at his country.
Andreï Kurkov had worldwide success with his book The Penguin. He returns to Liana Levi editions with The gray bees, the story of Sergueitch and Pashka, the last inhabitants of an abandoned village in the gray zone, an area located between the Donbass and western Ukraine. A few months ago, there was still talk of a latent war between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian forces. A territory now devastated by bombs.
Are novels another way to understand the complexity of what is happening today between kyiv and Moscow? The writer is convinced of this even if he deploys all his energy in forums and interviews in the press around the world, he who speaks nine languages.
It has been more than three weeks since he left kyiv, his apartment, his library to take refuge with his family in the west of the country, near the Hungarian border. It is there, in a small two-room apartment that friends lent him, that he lives with his family, his wife and two sons, aged 23 and 19. It was from there that he took our call to answer, in French, the questions we asked him.
An interview conducted by Frédérique Lebel and Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint.