Thanks to Keith Gessen's review in The New Yorker, I bought a copy of Andrey Kurkov's Grey Bees because I wanted to know more about life in Ukraine. The novel is set in the Donbas after Russian separatists have turned the region into a war zone. It makes for illuminating topical reading now that Putin has assaulted the whole country; but far more important to me, it goes on my shelf of deeply humane books to treasure and reread. My husband loved it, too, incidentally. It should appeal to many audiences—and kudos to Boris Dralyuk, who translates smoothly it into lovely English.
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