Grey zones and contact zones: Ukrainian literature, war and Empire

Grey zones and contact zones: Ukrainian literature, war and Empire

Ukraine is often discussed as a ‘borderland’, a place that is always “in between” – between empires, between nation states, between totalitarianisms, between east and west, perhaps even between the violence of the past and the unattainable future. Sometimes, Ukraine as a place in its own right, as a centre as much as a periphery, can disappear from view.

The talk will consider these questions in relation to recent Ukrainian literature, focusing on the work of Andrei Kurkov. Kurkov has explored the state of in-betweenness in several texts, most notably his recent Grey Bees (2020), but also earlier works such as The Good Angel of Death (2010). His work provides a keen analysis of what it means to live in the ‘grey zone’, where the uncertainty of the war-ravaged present and the traumas of the colonial past overlap.