The Elif Life

The Elif Life

Lviv dispatch

Elif Batuman's avatar
Elif Batuman
Oct 20, 2023
∙ Paid

A lot of people in my life have been asking me why I would go to a book festival in Ukraine during a war, so I will start with answering that. Just to be clear, the festival was in Lviv, in western Ukraine, 300+ miles from the active front—not just an extremely beautiful city, but security-wise not that different rn from visiting Poland (you fly into Kr…

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