Grey Bees

By Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine's most famous modern writer. He was born in Leningrad and writes in Russian, but lives in Kiyiv (or at least did until recently - I'm not sure where he is at present). It's a novel about the war in Ukraine, but back in 2014, after Russia had annexed Crimea. The grey zone is a no man's land in eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian forces and the pro-Russian separatists, and the grey bees live there along with their keeper, through whose eyes the book is told. The tone started out quite humorous, but it's become more serious as it's gone on. 

I'm reading it for a literature class I've joined which met for the first time today via Zoom. It has some in-person meetings but it actually suits me quite well to do it by Zoom this week and the next while I'm still working. We won't be discussing this book until next week; today we talked about An Angel at my Table by Janet Frame - but the cover for that is sadly very dull, so I've gone for this instead ;-)