They say that people remember the bad things more often than the good. Not me. I remember well what has pleased and surprised me in my life, but what I did not like or what has hurt me has been forgotten, left at an almost inaccessible depth in the well of memory. In this we see the instinct of self-preservation, although it works in a special way. We protect our psyche from bad memories and support it with good memories. In our memory, we can idealise the past so that nostalgia soon sets in, even for times that we would not have wished upon our worst enemy." This took me a while to complete but it was so worth it. I read my first fiction from Kurkov this year and quite enjoyed it. He is a matter of fact and strangely dispassionate writer but it doesn’t mean he is devoid of compassion or empathy. The novel was mildly satirical but also kind of sweet. A pet penguin (named after Kurkov’s real life brother) figured prominently. We have a small garden and we hope that we can plant potatoes and carrots for ourselves. For us it is a hobby, but what kind of hobby can you have during a war? If the Ukrainian army manages to drive the Russian military away from our region, we will try to return to Lazarevka, to live a normal life again. Although the term "normal life" now seems but a myth, an illusion. In actuality, there can be no normal life for my generation now. Every war leaves a deep wound in the soul of a person. It remains a part of life even when the war itself has ended. I have the feeling that the war is now inside me. It is like knowing that you live with a tumour that cannot be removed. You cannot get away from the war. It has become a chronic, incurable disease. It can kill, or it can simply remain in the body and in the head, regularly reminding you of its presence, like a disease of the spine. I fear I will carry this war with me even if my wife and I some day go on holiday – to Montenegro or Turkey, as we once did." Not all Russia is a collective Putin. The unfortunate thing is that there is within Russia no collective anti-Putin.”

No one with the slightest interest in this war, or the nation on which it is being waged, should fail to read Andrey Kurkov' -- Dominic Lawson, Daily Mail Kurkov’s contemporaneous account begins not with the invasion but with the build-up, the daily ups and downs of a country on the brink of what might be extinction, or maybe just another round in a grinding cycle of Russian threats and detente. Often meandering, sometimes unfocused, his exposition of Ukrainian politics and culture at times seem unsure of its intended readership – domestic or foreign? – but there is always much of interest. Not least, the extent to which actor-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was seen, before the invasion, as too soft on Putin and too easily distracted by his feud with his own predecessor, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. This is the first book of Kurkov I read, although I've heard of him before as one of the few Ukrainian authors who have a presence in the global literature community and has English translations. Some list called him the most well-known Ukrainian author. I must say neither I nor most of my Ukrainian friends have heard of him, though some Western friends have. Något som mer berörs det vi kan kalla hedniska traditioner som ännu lever kvar i Ukraina. Som till exempel att vid Påsk göra fint vid graven och ta med sig mat och prata och minnas de döda vid graven. In his new book, a version of the diary he has been writing since Russia invaded his country last February, the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov writes, among other things, of soup. It is July and on the cultural front, where fighting with Russia has also been “very active”, there is at last good news for Ukraine: Unesco has just registered the culture of Ukrainian borscht as part of its intangible heritage. Kurkov, like the rest of his countrymen and women, is thrilled. Apparently, the world disagrees with Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, who has repeatedly tried to defend Russian borscht from the “encroachment of Ukrainian nationalists”.

Novelist turned war crimes investigator Victoria Amelina, who dug up Vakulenko’s diary. Photograph: Ed Ram/The Guardian So, if Ukraine had fallen - as it might have, had Volodymyr Zelensky not refused America's offer to move him to safety with the inspirational words: "I need ammunition, not a ride" - would we now be talking about fighting in the Baltic?

Russians have a collective mentality," he explains. "They used to have one tsar and he was the symbol of stability. For them, stability is more important than freedom. There are more manifestations of patriotism on Facebook than in the real world. I do not know the reason for that.” (75)

When I saw someone reading this at the cafe in the spring, I thought it might be a good introduction to Ukraine (a country I know little about) and the war from the Ukrainian perspective. I’m so glad I did. This is written just before and during the first 6 months of the war. Kurkov and his family become IDPs in their own country and he essentially journals that experience. He is furious and anxious and grim but also full of cautious patriotism and hope for his country. While key events we know from the news are referenced, Kurkov also covers the mundanity and minutiae of war. What people do in the in between. He also talks history and politics and culture but also about his neighbours and shops and cinema and the plight of animals. I found it really enlightening to have his perspective on Russian aggression, Putin’s motivations, European politics as it pertains to Ukraine and Ukrainian daily life (the culture of Ukrainian borscht! Easter bread! Eurovision! Life in metro stations. The people who stay.) But most interesting was Kurkov’s discussions about the status of Ukrainian literature and the attempted cultural destruction of Ukraine by Russia. Sometimes, dropping off for an hour or two, I dream,” he wrote in the diary’s last entry. “During the first period of occupation I dreamed of numbers, old calendars, friends. I also dreamed of our lads fighting, dreamed I was hugging them, greeting them. I am scared to think of how they are. During the first days of occupation I gave up a little, then due to my half-starved state, totally. Now I’ve pulled myself together, even raking the garden and digging up potatoes to take into the house.” As if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian National character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for love of life.”