Speaker
Andrey Kurkov
Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine’s most successful post-independence authors. Having graduated from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world’s media, notably in the UK, France, Germany, and the United States. Kurkov was recognised as one of the 100 most influential Ukrainians in the Korrespondent magazine 2011 ranking.