Sergei is one of the last residents living in this, what's called this grey zone. He was abandoned by his wife and daughter, they went to live in a big city in Vinica. But he remained with his six beehives, six beef families. And probably subconsciously he feels that he is also a bee. Because actually people of Donbass, they were like bees. They work hard, they produce honey, they never complain, they are not paid. His dream is after he understands that actually the war is influencing a negative sense, the taste of honey, he wants to take them on holiday away from the war.
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Ukraine’s best known novelist Andrey Kurkov joins us to speak about life, literature, and the war in Ukraine, as well as the complexities of the Ukrainian identity. Andrey Kurkov has been hailed as a latter-day Bulgakov and a Ukrainian Murakami, his works injected with an absurdist sense of the oddities of life. But with the unfolding of events in Ukraine this year, his fictional reflections on conflict in his nation have become even more pertinent. Our host for this episode is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet, who has been covering the conflict in Ukraine since it unfolded in February.
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