ANDREY KURKOV

ANDREY KURKOV, born in 1961 near St. Petersburg in the town of Budogoshch, now lives in Kyiv. After graduating from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warden at Odesa, and then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays, and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels—the first of which he had to borrow money from friends to self-publish and sell on the sidewalks of Kyiv. He has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers in Ukrainian history, and his books have been translated into 25 languages.

Andrey Kurkov’s events in the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series, entitled Ukrainian Literature and Ukrainian Politics: Which One is More Dynamic?, took place in January 2008.