Presented by Lisez l'Europe
Our last book club of the season will feature a
Ukrainian novel and will take place
Saturday June 10 at 3:30 pm at the Goethe-Institut Montreal. It is organized in collaboration with the
Ukrainian Club Montreal.
The book chosen for this session is "
Grey Bees", by Andrey Kurkov (translated by Boris Dralyuk). The discussion will be held in
French and moderated by
Olha Holovko, of the Ukrainian Club Montreal.
Please confirm your presence
before June 9 at the following address:
lisezleurope-mtl@goethe.de
About the book:
Ukraine’s most famous novelist dramatises the conflict raging in his country through the adventures of a mild-mannered beekeeper.
“A warm and surprisingly funny book from Ukraine’s greatest living novelist” Charlie Connelly, New European Books of the Year
Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine’s Grey Zone, the no-man’s-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the war, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, his “frenemy” from his schooldays.
With little food and no electricity, under ever-present threat of bombardment, Sergeyich’s one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace.
This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich’s childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.
But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country? (maclehosepress.com)
About the author:
Born near Leningrad in 1961, ANDREY KURKOV was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received “hundreds of rejections” and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, was published in 2014, followed by the novel The Bickford Fuse (MacLehose Press, 2016). He lives in Kiev with his British wife and their three children. (maclehosepress.com)
The book can be obtained (in French) at the following bookstores:
Librairie Gallimard: (10% discount for Lisez l’Europe members)
librairie@gallimardmontreal.com
514 499-2012
Librairie du Square au Carré St-Louis:
librairiedusquare@librairiedusquare.com
514 845-7617
Librairie du Square - Outremont:
outremont@librairiedusquare.com
514 303-0612
Also available as an eBook on
Amazon.
French and
English copies (book and ebook) are also available through the
Grande Bibliothèque and the
Montreal public library network.
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