I’m reading Dmitry Bykov’s biography of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. I haven’t finished the book, so I’m not ready to say anything about it. I only want to comment on the author for now.

I wrote about Bykov several times in the past. He’s so talented that I actually buy his books of poetry. His are the only books of poetry I have ever bought in my life not for teaching or research but simply to read. I’m not a poetry person. It’s got to be absolutely out-there poetry for me to buy it.

Bykov is also a talented novelist and biographer with a voluminous output. He’s a real writer. And he can’t go back to Russia or ever get published there again. Imagine for a writer suddenly to lose his entire readership, his linguistic environment, his purpose as a writer. People in the past returned to Stalinist USSR because they couldn’t accept such a loss.

This isn’t an issue of financial necessity. Bykov is famous, he’s been invited to teach at Cornell. This is about not having any readers for his new books. This very long and massively researched biography of Zelensky is an example. People would go to jail in Russia, where Bykov was designated “a foreign agent”, for owning a copy. Jail times for posting something like “I want peace” in Russia have surpassed sentences for rape. A book about Zelensky would be considered treason of the highest order.

Bykov understands that his book won’t be read in Ukraine either because it’s in Russian and he’s from Russia. Nobody wants to hear a Russian perspective on anything. Bykov says it’s as should be, and I respect him for not pouting.

I’ll write about the book once I read it, which will be soon since my reading speed in Russian is stratospheric.