Kyiv, November 3, 2015. A nationwide tour in support of the new novel by writer and publicist Andriy Lyubka Carbide starts on November 3. It will be held within the Network project, which is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and initiated by a team of the International Literary Corporation MERIDIAN CZERNOWITZ. The project aims to combine public initiatives and managers from 30 regions of Ukraine to create literary discussion platforms. The list of project partners now covers about 20 regional centers and five frontline cities. “Among the first steps towards implementing the project was presentations of Serhiy Zhadan’s book Life of Mariya in 33 cities of Ukraine, and now it is Andriy Lyubka and his Carbide. The tour will have two stages. In November, the writer will visit 19 cities in the northern, southern, central and eastern Ukraine, including visits to 5 frontline cities. In December, Lyubka will visit six cities in western Ukraine. Overall, the tour will cover about 30 cities, each of them will host two events: a press conference for the region media and a literary discussion event,” said Yulia Pelepchuk, Curator of the Network, at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
According to her, over the first year the project is going to organize six more tours of all the network cities involving such writers as Serhiy Zhadan, Yuriy Andrukhovych, Taras Prokhasko, Yuriy Izdryk, Dmytro Lazutkin, and Kateryna Babkina.
Lyubka’s tour will start with a presentation in Kyiv on November 3 at 7p.m. at the House of Education and Culture “Master Class”. According to the writer, his new novel tells about a character named Carbide, who lives in a fictional Ukrainian town in the region of Transcarpathia and in 2015, decides to build a tunnel under the European Union border with a group of his fellow smugglers. “The events of 2012 were the first impulse for me to write this book, when the Slovak authorities in Uzhhorod disclosed a tunnel under the border that served as a subway for cross-border smuggling. The action of the novel unfolds after Euromaidan revolution, after the Russian aggression in Ukraine and one of the main character’s ideas is a noble aim to open for Ukraine a way to the EU. This is a novel about an idealist who has a light and kind idea which is, as usual, used by pragmatists and thieves for their purposes,” said Andriy Lyubka, writer, essayist and translator.
