![]() A likeable, endearing, enduringly post-Soviet everyman, Sergey lives in Little Starhorodivka, an all but abandoned village located in the “grey zone,” a long, narrow stretch of territory that separates the Ukrainian front line from the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” statelets that broke away from Ukraine in 2014. The protagonist of Grey Bees is Sergey Sergeyich, a forty-nine-year-old former mine-safety inspector, prematurely retired seven years earlier after silicosis wrecked his lungs. Profoundly moving and, at times, surprisingly lyrical, Grey Bees, by the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, is gently powerful, and made even more so by what has happened since it was first published in 2018 (the American edition, translated by Boris Dralyuk, was released this year). ![]() ![]() ![]() T here is something peculiarly unnerving about glimpses of lives being lived without any awareness of approaching catastrophe-film footage of Edwardian England, say, or jfk at Love Field. ![]()
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