During April I attended a conference on children's literature in Ukraine. Initially, I flew to Krakow, in Poland, and stayed with my relatives until I was joined a few days later by some of the other delegates. We then caught the train to L'viv, crossing the border to Ukraine at Przemysl. In L'viv, some students have been translating the first few chapters of The Divide into Ukrainian - you can see them on the left. Everyone was very kind and helpful, and the food was wonderful! Although I don't remember much of the Russian I learned at school, it was a big help when I had to decipher street names written in Cyrillic... After the conference finished I took the train to Kyiv (formerly Kiev), which has some wonderful architecture - and the best Metro system I've ever encountered. Above is a photo of me in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which means Independence Square. And Hello to Russell from Leicester, who owns the whole Divide trilogy and came onstage after my reading in the Palace of Arts in L'viv to introduce himself. How bizarre was that?
