Grey Bees, by Andrey Kurkov - Paul
Sergey Sergeyich lives in the Grey Zone between the separatist-controlled region of Donbas and Ukraine. Only Sergey and his ‘frenemy’ Pashka remain in their village, with no electricity, few supplies and the constant risk of shelling by the Russians and the Ukrainian to military either side.
But Sergey doesn’t worry too much about his own safety – he worries more about his bees. They are currently hibernating in four hives under shelter, but he wants to take them somewhere where they can fly in safety, away from the Grey Zone.
First published in Ukraine in 2018 and written in response to the Russian invasion of Crimea and the eastern Donbas in 2014, this was published in English in 2020 with a new introduction by Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine’s best-known novelist. Tragically, his introduction ends with a hope for peace in the east of his country, written just 18 months before Russia began its war on the whole of Ukraine.
Through the winter in his near deserted village and then in his journey to find peace for his bees, Sergey encounters soldiers, separatists, Kafkaesque Russian bureaucrats, Crimean Tatars and civilians both friendly and unfriendly. As a reader I came to realise that my view of Ukraine as a single place invaded by an enemy is too simple –Sergey is friendly with a Ukrainian soldier, while Pashka is friends with a Russian ‘volunteer’, and many of the Ukrainians Sergey encounters view him with suspicion as being ‘from Donestsk’, until he explains he’s from the Grey Zone and not a separatist.
Throughout the book, Sergey is ambivalent towards the Russian invaders, upset by the damage inflicted on his village, but never angry, and only when he travels to the Crimea and encounters the cruelty of some Russians towards the Muslim Tatar minority does he take a side. I must admit, I wanted him to feel more strongly about the country we now see under constant attack, but perhaps the reality is that (at least between 2014 and February this year) ordinary people living ordinary lives regarded the political upheavals as something they had no control over, so, in Sergey’s case, his focus remains on his bees.
This isn’t Kurkov’s most famous book – ‘Death and the Penguin’ is his best known – but it is perhaps his most relevant for the current time. Kurkov’s prose (in translation from the Russian in which he writes) is straightforward and fairly matter-of-fact, and in the journey Sergey takes as well as the writing style, I was reminded of Graham Greene’s ‘Monsignor Quixote’ – a simple man in search of simple things, traveling through a surreal but very real world.
Definitely a recommended read if you want to learn more about Ukraine through what will become a classic work of fiction rather than the constant horror of the news.
Paul
