Diary of an Invasion
About this ebook
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov was forced to flee his hometown of Kyiv. This journal is a harrowing record of the months leading up to and after the invasion, as Kurkov and his family migrate to western Ukraine for shelter. Surrounded by others fleeing violence, he pens incisive dispatches on the latest border conflicts and bombardments, and the shifts and schisms inside Ukrainian social and political life. These wartime entries ruminate on Ukraine’s historic past and possibilities for its future.
An avid political commentator, Kurkov has written for prominent English newspapers, delivered lectures, and been interviewed across Europe on the war in Ukraine. Now with an introduction by Financial Times Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller and a 2025 afterword from the author reflecting on the years that have elapsed since the war began, Dairy of an Invasion is a deeply affecting glimpse into the day-to-day realities of millions.
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About the author
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, his first in English translation, 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 novel Grey Bees was published in the United States by Deep Vellum in 2022, where it became a sensation for its honest and personal representation of life in Ukraine. He lives in Kyiv with his British wife and their three children.
