‘Like reading under the covers’: books flourish in blackout-hit Ukraine

theguardian.com:

“T 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.”

After the terrifying early months of 2022, and a brutal winter of drone attacks and blackouts, a crop of new independent bookshops is hardly what one would expect to find in the Ukrainian capital. But, in defiance of Russia’s ongoing invasion, they are springing up all around Kyiv.

In the central Pechersk district, Misto, meaning “city”, opened in December. At the time, Russian missile attacks were regularly casting Kyiv into darkness. Everyone told Diana Slonchenko, its owner, that she was mad. But war, she says, “changed my mindset”. Her desire to open a bookshop had switched from “something I’ll do one day, to something I need to do now”.

Previously, she worked as a flight attendant and kept her job through the Covid-19 pandemic, but lost it when the Russian invasion stopped civilian flights. Her bookshop is airy, with pale wood fittings, large windows, and a selection of vinyl neatly displayed above a record player. “I wanted it to be light and warm – like a library from the past, maybe a school library but in a good way. No Soviet stuff. I want people to come in here and feel safe,” she says.

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, Ask Miechka, by Eugenia Kuznetsova, about four generations of Ukrainian women.

Over in the city’s cafe- and bar-filled Podil district, the Book Lion bookshop opened in August. Comfortable chairs and tables are dotted around;