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Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war

The Guardian UK Sunday 07 June 2026, 09:00 UTC By Charlotte Higgins in Kyiv 1 min read
Key Points

Visitors flock to Book Arsenal in Ukraine’s capital as wartime writing takes centre stageIt was a literary festival, all right, but if your reference for such things is Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, or Melbourne and Sydney, or New York and Washington DC, then at Kyiv Book Arsenal you might think you had slipped through a crack in the universe and landed in an alternative reality. For a start, they were so young, the audience members. Dressed in their considerable best, they clutched their bags...

Visitors flock to Book Arsenal in Ukraine’s capital as wartime writing takes centre stage

It was a literary festival, all right, but if your reference for such things is Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, or Melbourne and Sydney, or New York and Washington DC, then at Kyiv Book Arsenal you might think you had slipped through a crack in the universe and landed in an alternative reality.

For a start, they were so young, the audience members. Dressed in their considerable best, they clutched their bags of books bought directly from publishers’ stalls and stopped to hug their friends – the festival providing the perfect opportunity for a people-watching passeggiata through its venue, the city’s vast 18th-century military arsenal.

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Kyiv (LOCATION) Book Arsenal (ORG) Ukraine (LOCATION) Edinburgh (LOCATION) Melbourne (LOCATION) Sydney (LOCATION) New York (LOCATION) Washington DC (LOCATION) Kyiv Book Arsenal (ORG)
Originally published by The Guardian UK Read original →

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