Lit in Translation

Grey Bees

Серые пчелы · Serye pchely

Andrey Kurkov (Андрій Курков, born 1961)

Translated by Boris Dralyuk

English editions

In English

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Mala Starohradivka lies in the so-called grey zone, and only two people still live there: Serhii Serhiiovych, a pensioner of forty-nine, and his former classmate Pashka. Their views of life could not be more opposed, yet they have to get along, even though Ukrainian soldiers visit one of them and separatists the other. Serhiiovych's main worry is where to take his bees, all six hives, when spring arrives: somewhere without shooting, so that the honey will not taste of war. He sets off without knowing what trials await him and his bees, and after a stop near Zaporizhzhia that goes badly, he decides to drive on to Crimea, to a Tatar beekeeper he met more than twenty years earlier at a beekeepers' congress.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Length
298 pages in the original
Genres
War (assigned by AI)
Set in
Ukraine
First published
2018 by Фолио
Author's age
57 when first published
ISBN

9789660382039 (original)

9780857059345 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

9780857059352 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

9781646051663 (Deep Vellum, United States)