BRENNPUNKT UKRAINE II: JURIJ WYNNYCHUK & ANDREJ KURKOW

Best-selling author Andrey Yuryevich Kurkov lives around the corner from Maidan Square, and witnessed the events of February and March 2014 first hand. In «Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev», Kurkov relates his personal account of the events that took place in his home country, and provides a chronicle of the turmoil that successfully avoids common clichés. In addition, Kurkov illuminates the unsteady political history in the Ukraine, and portrays its main protagonists.

Yuri Vynnychuk also experienced the country’s entanglements first hand. Until 1990, he could not publish his books under his real name; today, he is one of the most popular and read authors in post-soviet Ukraine. His novel «The Tango of Death» was recently translated into German. Vynnychuk works and lives in Lemberg, where Andrey Kurkov’s novel «Jimmy Hendrix in Lemberg», published at the same times as his «Diaries», also takes place. The authors will read from their new novels and discuss current affairs in the Ukraine with Urlich M. Schmid. The conversation takes place in Ukrainian, with German simultaneous translation.