The discussion centred on his novel “Jimi Hendrix’s Tour of Lviv”, a contender for the International Booker Prize. Set in Lviv in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the book offers — through its characters and their stories — a vivid and humorous portrait of a city with a distinctive cultural and linguistic identity.

During the meeting at the Centre for Openness and Dialogue (COD), attended also by Tourism, Culture and Sports Minister Blendi Gonxhja, Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov shared with the audience fragments from Lviv and everyday life in Ukraine, while reflecting on the role of literature in times of crisis and war.

“Of course, a writer’s responsibility becomes a hundred times more visible and more important in times of crisis, and especially in times of war,” Kurkov said.

Described by The Guardian as “a love letter to Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural and linguistic city,” the novel uses humour and human stories to capture a turbulent period in the country, turning literature into a means of preserving memory, identity and the voice of ordinary people.

Andrey Kurkov is the author of 19 novels, translated into numerous languages and read by an international audience. In Albania, his work has been brought into the local language by translator Bujar Hudhri and published by Onufri.

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