Grey Bees: A captivating, heartwarming story about a gentle beekeeper caught up in the war in Ukraine

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No one shot at the enemy from his yard, his windows, his fence, which meant his home had no enemies.

The whole situation described in the book is absurd and funny and it looks like a scene straight out of a Kafka story or a Beckett play. Grey Bees is a gentle, sometimes ambivalent book about a conflict that had its share of moral complexity. We may look at it from time to time on the nightstand and feel an obligation to continue — critics have applauded it — but still we find ourselves unable to shake that resistance.This is an oddly charming novel despite the subject matter, and Kukov’s humor and the up-close, introspective narrative make this a rather comforting read.

Even though Sergeyich is treated well by the Tatar community as well as officials and local authorities, there is always this anxious atmosphere as he never knows how the ones in the power or from the other communities will react to him – a man from Grey Zone.Different kinds of silence are experienced at different times—that of the snow when you stare at it long enough, for instance. Wenn die Separatisten oder Baptisten nicht die Beiden durch regelmäßige Lieferung des Notwendigsten unterstützen würden, wäre ein Leben kaum möglich. Most people have fled, the only other villager left’s Pashka, an enemy since their schooldays, but someone with whom Sergey now has a tentative friendship.

Und wie der Autor es am Ende schafft, das Leben der Menschen und der Bienen gleiche Bedeutung beizumessen, so dass man sich fragt, wer denn nun eigentlich die Grauen sind, ist schon eine raffinierte Symbolik. There had been nothing but snow, and if you looked at it long enough, you would begin to hear white noise — a kind of silence that takes hold of your soul with its cold hands and doesn’t release it for a long time. Es muss an Andrej Kurkows Sprache und der meisterlichen Übersetzung liegen, dass „Graue Bienen“ für mich regelrecht zu einem page turner wurde.The dreams—and the brief moments of friendship and conviviality Sergeyich enjoys while on his journey—offer needed respite, because the book is also filled with cruelty. He’s one of only two human inhabitants left in Little Starhorodivka, a two-street village in the grey zone between the Ukrainian and Russian lines. Her biography of Robert Walser, Clairvoyant of the Small, was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. Von den ehemaligen Dorfbewohner*innen sind nur noch er und sein Feindfreund Paschko übrig - und natürlich die Bienen von Sergej. It was almost noon, high time to head back to the house, but that spot on the field, on the rising slope towards Zhdanivka and the Ukrainian trenches, puzzled Sergeyich and would not let him go.