Among the thousands who crowded the streets of Toronto on Sunday this week, during a rally of solidarity with Ukraine, was also a gray-haired woman in a red wool hat with cat eyes and a cat mustache painted on it.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood tweeted her photo in the parade, holding the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine.
The International Writers' Association, of which Atwood is an active member, published a letter that day signed by more than 1,000 journalists, poets and writers, condemning the Russian invasion.
"World writers are disgusted by the violence of Russian forces against Ukraine." , It reads, "We are united in calling for peace.
"Europe can not be safe without a free and independent Ukraine."
Among the signatories: Paul Oster, Jonathan Franzen, Alexander Hamon, Alif Shapak, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Olga Tokerchuk and Joyce Carroll Oates.
Such a protest was also expressed by the Russian writer Vladimir Kaminer, who lives in Berlin, and said that "the war is not against Ukraine at all, but against Europe and the whole Western world."
Renowned American writer Stephen King also came out against Putin, writing that "this is the first time in a long career that he looks like an idiot."
Atwood, Photo: GettyImages
In a telephone interview conducted this week by the New York Times with Ukrainian writer Andrei Krakow ("Death and the Penguin," "A Friend of the Deceased") from his home in Kiev, Korkov said he had stopped writing his new novel and was devoting his time to talking to reporters. In his country.
In April, an English translation of his latest novel, "Gray Bees," will take place, which takes place in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the area where separatists have declared their allegiance to Russia.
The protagonists of the book are a pair of elderly men, living in the no-man's land between the positions of the Ukrainian army and the positions of separatists.
"I did not plan to write the book, but since 2014 an influx of refugees from Donbas has arrived here," says Krakow.
"I met one of them who used to go every month to the village he left, at the front, where seven families were left with nothing, no shops, no electricity, to bring them medicine and other things. As a thank you they gave him jars of pickles."
Ukrainian writer Andrei Krakow, Photo: APP
"There are thousands of people today who are stuck between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, and they have nowhere to go. I want to give them a voice," he said.
Krakow added that in 2014 Ukrainian literature was scarce in references to war.
"We wrote mostly about sex, drugs and crime, of course. But the war created parallel literature written by former fighters. If Ukraine survives, I guess even more militant literature will be born here."
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