Andrey Kurkov’s short story included in Booker Prize Foundation anthology

Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov’s short story “Don’t Fear the Depths” will be featured in All Around the World, a collection to be published by the Booker Prize Foundation as part of the British Quick Reads program. Priced at one pound sterling, the collection aims to make fiction more accessible to adult readers.

According to the author, the collection will include his short story “Don’t Fear the Depths,” written over 20 years ago. The story is about the Kyiv Sea, memories, and the villages that were flooded when the reservoir was created.

Kurkov said the Booker Prize committee contacted him in 2025 and invited him to contribute a work to an upcoming anthology. According to the writer, the committee explained that the collection would feature texts by previous Booker Prize winners and nominees. Kurkov noted that his books had twice been longlisted for the International Booker Prize: “Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv” (translated by Reuben Woolley) in 2023 and “The Silver Bone” (translated by Boris Dralyuk) in 2024.

“I haven’t written short stories in a long time, but I submitted three stories written between 1995 and 2005, including one about the Orange Revolution. But the editors chose the stories about the Kyiv Sea and about memory, about the villages that were flooded to make way for this reservoir,” said Kurkov.

The Booker Prize Foundation is launching a short story collection entitled All Around the World, including works by the Booker prize winners Anne Enright, David Szalay and Booker prize nominee Nadifa Mohamed. The collection was curated by another former winner, Roddy Doyle.

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“All Around the World will be distributed as part of the Quick Reads initiative, which is in its 20th year of seeking to improve adult literacy. Readers will be able to pick up the book for £1 from Thursday and the Booker Prize Foundation will donate 12,000 copies to people who face barriers to reading. The book will also be delivered to the foundation’s prison reading programme, Books Unlocked, in addition to community partners such as Bookbanks,” mentions the Guardian.

The collection will also be made available free of charge in digital and audio formats to readers of The Big Issue. An additional 300 print copies will be distributed through the magazine’s vendors.

“Quick Reads is like dipping your toe in the water of literature, with some of the barriers that might put people off removed. A lot of people might feel there is nothing about their world in books. The stories in All Around the World have access points, and I hope they alert readers to the fact that, actually, their life might be in here somewhere,” said the Booker prize-winning writer Roddy Doyle in an interview with the Big Issue.

“For 20 years, Quick Reads has shown that when books are accessible, relevant and easy to fit into busy lives, more people discover the pleasure and power of reading. The findings from our research show that many adults want to read more, but factors such as limited time, competing demands and confidence can get in the way. 

“We hope this collection helps spark a reading habit that lasts a lifetime, opening the door to new stories, new perspectives and new possibilities,” said Karen Napier, chief executive of the Reading Agency.

Quick Reads provide a route into reading that prioritises great story telling and adult-focused content while ensuring the books are written in an accessible and easy to read style. The books are written by some of the most popular authors in the UK – including Andy McNab, Jojo Moyes, Anne Cleeves, Ian Rankin and Benjamin Zephaniah – so they can be a brilliant entry point to new genres, authors as well as the spark to reignite or build up the joy of reading.  

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Main image: Andy Hall/The Observer