Andrey Kurkov’s war diaries continue – a searing, deeply human portrait of a nation reshaped by war.
In this third volume of Andrey Kurkov’s war diaries, Ukraine’s greatest living writer chronicles the third year of the full-scale invasion from his home in Kyiv and from journeys all over the country – capturing moments of horror, resilience, absurdity and grace with unmatched clarity.
Children on a contested border wear hooded bulletproof vests to school; soldiers write haiku; professional clowns go to war; and the mother of a young soldier, killed in battle, uses his compensation money to create a rehabilitation centre for veterans. Roses bloom across Ukraine in quiet tribute to a florist and soldier killed in Avdiivka, remembered by those who once bought his flowers.
The Dnipro River seems to slow when the first missiles fall, as though nature itself had paused in shock. In Pokrovsk, 7,500 residents refuse to leave a city that no longer exists – their homes obliterated but their will unbroken. A general’s seventeen-year-old pet toad becomes an iconic symbol of defiance. And buried beneath a cherry tree, a murdered writer’s final diary is recovered, a haunting echo of a silenced voice.
From the home front to the trenches, Kurkov captures the rhythms of survival – the quiet rituals, unlikely joys, unexpected humour and appalling costs – in an intimate and deeply moving record of national endurance. Three Years on Fire is a luminous act of remembrance, rich with unforgettable detail and human spirit, from a writer whose voice stands witness to everything Ukraine has lost – and everything it refuses to give up.
From the international bestselling author of The Stolen Heart, Death and the Penguin and The Grey Bees
Three Years on Fire by Andrey Kurkov was published by Open Borders Press; an imprint of Orenda Books on 20 November 2025. I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you today as part of this blog tour.
Extract from Three Years on Fire by Andrey Kurkov
01.01.2025
Fast away the Old Year Passes . . .
The old year passes, taking with it people you will never meet again, some more familiar, some less. The stroke of midnight brushes into the past all the events of the previous twelve months: weddings, anniversaries, sports competitions and official state visits. In wartime, the old year carries away much more than a peacetime year can. It consigns to history factories, farms, museums, theatres and hospitals. It sweeps away entire cities into the irretrievable past. Maryinka in Donetsk region was destroyed by Russian shelling. No-one lives there now. Many other towns and villages met the same
fate during 2024.
Last year turned into a slow farewell to the once- flourishing city of Pokrovsk in the west of Donetsk region. Trains were still going there in the summer. In September, when banks and shops began to close, Pokrovsk had about 30,000 residents – half of its pre-war population.
On September 27, the last evacuation train drew out of the city. While Russia continued to bomb and shell Pokrovsk, the most stubborn residents refused to believe that the same thing would happen to their hometown as had happened to Chasiv Yar and many other settlements in Donbas: slow but sure destruction. At that time, Russian troops were ten kilometres away. Today they are right at the edge of the city and, at night, small groups try to break through into Pokrovsk proper where 7,500 people are still hiding, trying to survive in partially destroyed buildings. The trauma they have suffered has made them impervious to suggestions that they should leave. How do they live in a city that no longer exists?
How do they survive without windows or heating? Some day, books and films about this will appear and audiences will empathise with the heroes of the stories and wipe away tears – pained by the memory of this tragedy. But today this is not a memory. It is happening as I write, and it is just one of thousands of tragedies caused by the Russian war. The story of Pokrovsk is dramatic, but it is only part of a huge tableau called “Aggression”.
In the ruins of the city, in addition to the 7,500 residents, there are Ukrainian soldiers who daily engage in battle with the Russian army. We are no longer talking about protecting a city – it is now only “territory”, Ukrainian territory. The city practically no longer exists. Abandoned cats and dogs search for food in the rubble. Volunteers are still risking their lives to reach Pokrovsk and evacuate the animals.
The Russian army has suffered huge losses in manpower and equipment in their attempts to take Pokrovsk, but it seems its leaders have decided to simply bypass the ruins without engaging in any further direct battles. They want to cut off the Ukrainian army’s supply routes – to encircle Pokrovsk, trapping the remaining inhabitants – and move onto Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
In December 2024 a monument to Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko and a coffin containing the body of Danilo Shumuk, a veteran of the struggle for Ukrainian independence who died in Pokrovsk in 2004, were removed from the city. The monument to Shevchenko has been taken to the town of Samar in Dnipropetrovsk region. Danilo Shumuk’s body was reburied at the Likhachev Cemetery in Lviv. The Ukrainian military organised the reinterment, confident that when the Russians occupy the ruins of Pokrovsk, they will destroy the graves of any anti-Soviet activists. Shumuk spent almost 30 years in prisons and concentration camps. Some of his descendants – captured Ukrainian soldiers, accused of terrorist activities – are languishing in the same prisons and camps.
Andrey Kurkov was born near Leningrad in 1961 and graduated from Kyiv Pedagogical
Academy of Foreign Languages in 1983. After working as a prison guard in Odesa and as a journalist, he self-published his texts and found renown as a novelist.
His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, became an international bestseller, translated into more than 43 languages, and has been in print since its publication in 2001.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the author has published unrivalled reports from his war- torn country in newspapers and magazines all over the world.
He has been a regular presence on radio and television, including BBC Radio 4’s “Letter from Ukraine”, and travelled worldwide to lecture on the perilous state of his country.
He has, in the process, become a crucial voice for the people of Ukraine.
Of his war journals, Diary of an Invasion was published in 2022 and Our Daily War in 2024.
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