Sergeyich has six hives, and the honey they produce is useful as an alternative to money, as he is able to barter for food and other goods. And this sense, which could make him worry terribly at any hour of the day, was focused entirely on one object: his bees. This blog is dedicated to book reviews, everything related to literature, travel as well as reflections on art and slow living. Grey Bees is as timely as the author's Ukraine Diaries were in 2014, but treats the unfolding crisis in a more imaginative way, with a pinch of Kurkov's signature humour.

Some bees fly, gather pollen, build honeycombs - live like the proletariat from day to day, from birth to death. The Tatar family that takes him in becomes the real heart of the story, with their extreme hospitality contrasting with the Russian officials who find any excuse to drive them out, finding flimsy excuses to jail a member of the family.

One of his beehives is marked by a soldier with shell-shock and is later found to contain a grenade. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers.

It's about his weird solitary life in his near-deserted village, the few people he meets, his peculiar road trip, and of course bees--creatures who do a rather better job of communal living and cooperation than people. Gerade für eine Person wie mich, die sich nie zuvor mit der Ukraine beschäftigt hat und diesen Krieg, der nun in der gesamten Ukraine herrscht, überhaupt nicht versteht, war dieser Roman genau die richtige Lektüre. From the silences of peace like outside amidst nature to silences which unsettle and or seem portents of things to come, to the different forms it may take in conversation, I thought the book’s exploration of it had me considering its different facets as I hadn’t ever before. This landscape of devastating historical memory is also a landscape of practical action; death and healing intersect on the grounds of this clinic where treatment continues even as the war continues to kill and maim.he tuned his ears to the colourful, sonorous silence of the world around him, the now silent flying-crying creature suddenly forgotten. He gets by, just barely—bartering his honey for other foodstuffs in the next town over, and occasionally taking naps on his “bee bed” (a mattress placed atop the six hives) when he’s feeling out of sorts. Sergeyich's interactions with individuals, from Pashka to Galya, a woman he meets on the way, to even then his ex-wife, make for the heart of the novel, a wary sort of cautiousness to all of them, but the basic human longing for connection still very clear.

He receives a visit from his former school rival Pashka, the only other resident left in the village.And even bees, he learns, can be made into weapons of war, such as ‘ the Colorado potato beetle, which the Americans had sent to undermine the Soviet Union’ (which is a fascinating story of the Cold War worth reading about). Take, for example, the beeswax candles he sells to a church and later reclaims from its bombed-out ruins. At one point, when Sergeyich points out to a local that the Tartars have a long connection to Crimea, she protests vehemently, parroting Russian propaganda about how: "This land's been Russian Orthodox since time immemorial !