INTRODUCTION


As the London Book Fair returns to Olympia more than a year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year will see a focus on Ukraine as the Spotlight territory while the ethics of Russian rights deals is sure to be a topic of conversation


London Book Fair Special A spotlight on Ukraine


London Book Fair Ukraine comes into the Spotlight at LBF


Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan


A


couple of weeks ago, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba was talking to the BBC and over the


course of a wide-ranging interview remarked on the irony of it taking an invasion by Russia “to make the world realise how cool [our art and culture] is”. His point is certainly valid in the book world. Prior to March 2022, I would hazard that even the most well-read Britons would have struggled to name one Ukrainian author. (Full disclosure: I am among the ignorant; before the invasion, I even thought Andrey Kurkov was Russian).


And Ukraine as a trend (if we can be so reductive) is as sizzling as cosy crime across our London Book Fair Agents’ Hotlists (pp 12–27), with 10 titles either writen by Ukrainians or Ukraine-themed. I’ve overseen our tri-annual book fair hotlists for a decade and it is difficult to remember any years prior to 2022 when even one Ukraine title was flagged. The UCL Ukraine and Eastern Europe culture specialist Uilleam Blacker—one of the judges of this year’s International Booker Prize, the shortlist of which will be revealed at LBF on 18th April—said to me recently that the sad realit is it has never been a beter


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OF CULTURE OLEKSANDR TKACHENKO WILL LAUNCH THE SPOTLIGHT SEMINARS


UKRAINE’S MINISTER


time to be a Ukrainian translator than during the past 12 months. Yet we are at the point in a news cycle, even for a large-scale conflict relatively close to home, where atention starts to wane. So kudos to LBF organisers for announcing last week that Ukraine would be its second Spotlight territory, aſter last year’s focus on Catalonia. The v.i.p. kicking off the Spotlight seminars is Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Ukraine culture minister who last year went on a campaign urging a boycot of Russian culture. Tkachenko’s not unreasonable rationale was that part of Russia’s justification for invasion was that Ukraine and Russia are one culture. Yet, a cessation of cultural exchange is a call that many in publishing seem to have disre- garded. Or at the very least, going by these LBF hotlists, some agents and publish- ers are selling rights to Russian publishers aſter a period last year when, if there was not a full-scale boycot, many had paused. But a boycot here is an extremely complex, thorny issue. Is it beter or worse to deprive Russian readers of Western authors and viewpoints? Particularly when it has been the Russian books industry that has been


LBF hotlis ers are publish when, boycot But com o


Kudos to LBF organisers for announcing last week that Ukraine would be its second Spotlight territory, after last year’s focus on Catalonia


leading the anti-war charge internally? We are at a strange point, then, as all the big rights fairs have ceased co-operation with Russian national stands and the country’s publishers have rarely atended since the start of the war. One Russian publisher, Phoenix, exhibited at Bologna 2023; there are currently no Russian publishers registered on LBF’s directory. Yet rights trading with the country, for some, continues apace. My view would be more Tkachenko-ist: any cultural exchange with Russia now should be untenable. But perhaps that is some naivet crossed with a bit of virtue signalling: if I really cared about freedom, justice and human rights I wouldn’t be tping this onto my made-in-China laptop. But perhaps this LBF Ukraine Spotlight programme might be a good platform to have a grown-up discussion on the Russia rights issue.


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