Ukraine to have a national pavilion at the Paris Book Fair 

Ukraine will have a national pavilion at the Paris Book Fair, with the motto «Ukraine: The Beating Heart of Europe». This according to a festival press release.  

The Ukrainian pavilion will have books about contemporary Ukrainian culture and recent works by Ukrainian authors such as Yuriy Andrukhovych, Stanislav Aseyev and Artem Chapeye.  

There will also be contemporary Ukrainian drama, translations of classics (Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky) and children’s books. 

Visitors will also be able to browse the book Ukraine. Cuisine et Histoire that explains Ukraine’s history, culture and traditions through food. The book was published by Éditions de La Martinière Cuisine, one of France’s leading publishers.

The pavilion organizers are urging France’s intellectual and cultural community to stand up and «not allow our culture to be destroyed, to help us preserve all that we built and put our soul into after the oppression of the russian empire, after soviet repressions: literature, art, music, cinema, everything that today russia wants to destroy by waging a deadly war against our country».  

Ukrainian authors will participate in several events at the Paris Book Fair:

• 21 April at 18:30 — at the opening of the Paris Book Fair they will announce the winners of the European Union Prize for Literature. The nominees this year include Yevhenia Kuznetsova’s Ask Miechka. 
• 22 April at 20:00 — interview with writer Andriy Kurkov and presentation of the French translation of his novel Les abeilles grises (Liana Levi), published by Grand Palais Éphémère, Agora
• 23 April at 18.00 — meeting with Sofia Andrukhovych at the Cultural Center of the Ukrainian Embassy in France – 22 Avenue de Messine, 75008 Paris.

«Literature can be a bridge for our dialogue. Because Ukraine and France are countries where we respect human rights, countries where we coexist, enriching each other with different languages, cultures and traditions, but at the same time we strive to protect our identity through culture and language», – the press release says. 

The Ukrainian pavilion is organized by the Ukrainian Book Institute, Ukrainian Institute, PEN Ukraine, International Book Arsenal Festival and International Book Forum Festival, with the support of the Embassy of Ukraine in France and Cultural Center of the Embassy of Ukraine in France.  

The Paris Book Fair will be held on April 22-24 in France. 

The Ukrainian pavilion at this year’s London Book Fair focused on non-fiction books and had the motto «Russia’s War On Ukraine Is Not Fiction, But Time To Act».

Read also: Ukraine at the center of the world’s attention: the 2022 London Book Fair