Grey Bees
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4.4 • 19개의 평가
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- US$9.99
출판사 설명
2022 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED FICTION
With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine’s most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict.
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 lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Kurkov's heartwarming and bittersweet latest (after The Bickford Fuse), a beekeeper determines to take care of his bees during wartime. Sergey Sergeyich, 49, and his lifelong frenemy Pashka Khmelenko are the only residents remaining in Little Starhorodivka, a village inside eastern Ukraine's 450-kilometer "grey zone," the no-man's land between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow. In the winter of 2017, Sergey befriends a Ukrainian soldier and Pashka does occasional favors for the Russians, but the men's complicated friendship endures. In March, Sergey heads south with his six hives seeking more peaceful fields for his bees to forage. In Vesele, he takes up with a widowed shopkeeper, but hits the road after being attacked following the funeral of a local soldier killed in a skirmish at Donbas. Sergey tracks down the family of a Crimean Tatar beekeeper whom he'd met at a convention years before, but realizes the Russian annexation of Crimea has done little to bring peace or stability to the region. The old-fashioned, ambulatory story slows to a crawl by the end, but Kurkov's well-crafted characters make it all worthwhile. It adds up to a wistful elegy for a nation being slowly torn apart.
사용자 리뷰
Why did I wait so long . . .
I had this wonderful book on my “want to read list” for a while—don’t know why I’ve put others ahead of it. I loved it. It's hard to explain its effect on me. It starts slowly—giving the reader time to get settled into Sergey’s world—for there is a war going on, but you'll forget it's there most times. Despite the omnipresent war, Sergey's world is not unpleasant, quite possibly because he’s changing location a lot in order to accommodate his bees. And despite Sergey’s seeming curmudgeonness when you first meet him, he's really good company. And despite the shelling and bombing there's quite a lot of pleasant, mystical silence and moments of reflection. And you're immersed in nature while you're in this book, and that, really where loving this book resides. The writing about nature is so captivating. The wording is so gentle—the author is in tune with the earth and the sky and the wind. The ride's bumpy at times, and not without danger. You'll be fearful for Sergey and his bees. He's so darn human it's hard not to like him, and he's like a mother grizzly when it comes to looking out for his bees. The writing is truly exquisite, though maybe it's the translation—most likely it's both. Many of the sentences resonated with my soul (that's coming from one who's not so sure of the existence of souls . . . I came away convinced I may actually have one—I could feel it being touched).