The start of June saw Kyiv enjoying Ukraine’s largest book festival – the Book Arsenal. There were many people in military uniform among the visitors and among the participants too, with some serving poets and prose writers being given special leave to take part in the festival.
President Zelensky and his wife Olena paid a visit together with a great many security guards. Everyone entering the venue was carefully checked and any knives or scissors were confiscated. Thus, publishers and book traders were left without their usual tools for unpacking the boxes of new volumes.
Zelensky bought several books, including “Killing the Tyrant: A History of Tyrannicide from Caesar to Gaddafi” by the Italian writer and lawyer Aldo Andra Cassi. As a result of this purchase, the book soared in popularity and its publisher, Anetta Antonenko, had to put in extra orders for additional copies.
The festival passed without any confrontational debates. Surprisingly, there was no discussion of the tendency towards censorship by civil society – a trend that directly affected the Book Arsenal and one of Ukraine’s largest publishing houses, KSD which planned to present the Ukrainian translation of “Brutal Prince” by the US author Sophie Lark – the first of seven of her novels purchased by KSD.
“Brutal Prince” may well have become a commercial bestseller if Ukrainian book bloggers had not decided to check the writer for “connections” with Russia. In one of her novels, it turns out, Sophie Lark calls Crimea “Russian,” in another she romanticizes the image of the Russian mafia in the United States, and generally shows an interest in and sympathy for Russian themes.
The wave of indignation raised on social networks by book bloggers forced the publishing house to take the painful step of destroying the entire print run of 30,000 copies. In addition, KSD announced that it would not be publishing any of the other Sophie Lark novels.
This is not the first case of a book or author being canceled, but it is the first time an entire print run by a foreign writer has been destroyed. You could say that the publisher should have checked more carefully for the presence of “trigger” issues in the novels, but the fact remains that a system of censorship by civil society is becoming the norm for the Ukrainian book market.
It is now the patriotic book bloggers and activists who decide which books are allowed onto the book market. KSD’s decisive action was probably designed to prevent the wave of hatred against the book spilling over onto its other publications or the network of KSD bookstores. The company stood to lose much more than just one print run.
Now that Book Arsenal 2025 is over, we can turn to predicting which books will become the bestsellers at next year’s festival. There is bound to be one called “Operation Spider Web” – describing how Ukrainian special services managed to destroy a large part of Russia’s strategic aviation. Books about special operations carried out in this war are still rare, but there are some in the pipeline, including a book by the head of the Armed Forces Main Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov, whose book about the first operation to blow up the Crimean Bridge should be published shortly.
The attack on the bridge took place on Oct. 8, 2022, and involved a truck filled with explosives. As the first openly discussed operation by the Ukrainian special services, it fueled our imaginations and boosted our confidence – strengthening our belief that Ukraine could successfully defend itself against an enemy with far greater forces.
Operation Spider Web has undoubtedly raised the spirit of Ukrainians again, but it will also increase the level of danger for civilians as Russia reacts to any mention of special operations against it by increasing missile and drone terror against Ukraine’s cities and villages.
Recently, another story surfaced that could easily form the plot of a future bestselling thriller novel. It involves the murder in Madrid of Ukrainian lawyer Andrey Portnov, who had just returned home to Spain after secret negotiations in Kyiv.
Portnov was the main legal adviser to pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Moscow after the Euromaidan. It is said that Portnov devised a system of control over Ukrainian court decisions and some political processes which functioned until the day of his death. The Ukrainian police proposed that a joint investigation with Spanish police be made into Portnov’s death, but the Spanish police declined the offer.
The lawyer Tetyana Muntyan – an associate of President Yanukovych who followed him to Moscow after the Euromaidan – recently accused Portnoy of organizing the murder of Kharkiv judge Vladimir Trofimov in 2012.
Unknown assassins killed Trofimov, his wife, son and daughter-in-law. All four were beheaded and, according to Muntyan, a photograph of their severed heads was sent to judges who were supposed to rule on cases related to Portnov’s interests. The murder of Judge Trofimov and his family members has never been solved. No one has written a book about this terrible crime either.
There are topics that only investigative journalists or professional lawyers can take on, but in Ukraine – as it seems – no such work is conducted. There must still be too much danger around these intrigues. Investigations would also require access to dangerous sources of information. In any case, the “true crime” genre is practically absent from the Ukrainian book market. But sooner or later this genre will appear on our bookstore shelves, filling some gaps in the accounts of Ukrainians’ recent history.