Kiev - Post Report Question and Answers
Do you recommend any books or movies about this city/country for those who are interested in learning more?
Books- Borderland Movies- Winter on Fire - May 2021
Mikhail Bulgakov "White Guard" - is about the events of 1917-1918 in Kyiv. - Jun 2018
"Bloodlands," any one of the good histories of Ukraine, "Everything is Illuminiated." - May 2017
History: Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. Contemporary Ukrainian literature in translation - I read Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov in English before I arrived, which I enjoyed. Some of Serhiy Zhadan's poems are translated into English. You can also find translations of Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko.
For movies - I loved the recent documentary Babushkas of Chernobyl. I haven't seen it, but The Tribe got a lot of international attention. - Nov 2016
Read local literature. For classics, look for translations of Taras Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Lina Kostenko... though Russia also claims him, Gogol wrote many classic stories of the Ukrainian countryside. For current literature - Try to find Serhiy Zhadan's poems in translation. Andrey Kurkov is a prominent contemporary novelist who is widely translated. Also, I enjoyed Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything is Illuminated," set in Ukraine, but take his (often-hilarious) depictions with a grain of salt.
Non-fiction: Everyone will say Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands," and everyone is right. Essential to understanding the brutal 20th century that has shaped the Ukrainian people today. If you're not ready to invest time in reading that tome, though, his writings for New York Review of Books and other publications are great too.
Movies: I haven't seen it yet, but The Tribe is an art house Ukrainian film that got lots of awards recently. I also enjoyed the documentary "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" - the director is American, but she does a brilliant job of presenting Ukraine's tough older generation with empathy and humor. - Jul 2016
Anything by Taras Shevchenko. - Nov 2015
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465031471/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0465031471&linkCode=as2&tag=thesunspousunder&linkId=46GGAURANTZ5RRFD The Economist, which named it "Books of the Year" says: "How Stalin and Hitler enabled each other's crimes and killed 14m people between the Baltic and the Black Sea. A lifetime's work by a Yale University historian who deserves to be read and reread. Bloodlands is not a fun read, but it explains the region like no other book can. It's very dark, but brings to light crucial information and ties it all together in a way that makes current events make "sense," if that's possible. - Jun 2015
People say Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
I don't know . . . I'm gonna write something after this experience! - Apr 2008
Borderland. - Apr 2008
