After a brutal winter of drone attacks and power cuts, new independent bookshops are springing up in Kyiv
hey have popped up like mushrooms after rain,” says Maria Glazunova, who works at the Dovzhenko Centre, Kyiv’s film archive. “They are lovely places where you can drink coffee, read, and just sniff the books.”
The most common question shoppers ask her is: “Can you recommend a book that is not about Ukrainian suffering?” That can be tough, she confesses. Nevertheless, she always suggests a novel she adores,Customers in Sens bookshop, Kyiv.Over in the city’s cafe- and bar-filled Podil district, the Old Lion bookshop opened in August. Comfortable chairs and tables are dotted around; Dolly Parton is on the stereo; coffee and wine is on hand.
There are no books in Russian or by Russian authors. This is a complete reversal: before the Russian incursions into Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, the book market was dominated by Russian-language titles, according to the Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko, whose works are displayed prominently in the shop.
“Ironically the winter of blackouts was very good for reading,” says Zabuzhko. During a winter of electricity and internet outages, reading a physical book by candlelight was possible when scrolling through a phone was not. “People were reading all the time – rediscovering the pleasures of one’s teenage years, as if they were reading under the covers.
“We want to fill the market up with original Ukrainian titles and books in translation,” said the bookseller Victoria Berkut. “There used to be a powerful stereotype that good translations of foreign literature could only be found in Russian – and we want to show that there are good translators into Ukrainian.”The idea is, she says, for staff to pass on their favourite books to readers, “and it’s working”.
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