Kateryna Moroz (Blindspot): A Ukrainian story of love and war
Kateryna Moroz will be in Luxembourg on February 26th to present the book she co-authored with Jérôme Bloch, set in Kyiv and Luxembourg City. Interview.
Why did you write this book?
I would say that this book is something that simply happened to us. There was a war, my country, my life. A lot of twists and turns since 2020. We all feel the need to reflect when our lives are turned upside down, but most of the time, the pace and unpredictability of our lives prevent us from doing so. I was deeply affected by my visit to the Dialog Museum in Frankfurt. It is a place where you spend an hour in total darkness. Right afterward, I met Jérôme at the Städel Museum. We had coffee and talked about all of this. During those few hours, he pieced the whole story together like puzzle pieces and immediately titled it "Blindspot" to illustrate the gap he perceived, while listening to my story, between Ukrainian and American cultures on the one hand, but also across Europe.
How did you write it?
I came to Frankfurt for medical treatment. At the time, I was telling my friends, "A girl on an IV drip doesn't argue with life." So, when Jérôme suggested we write a book together and sent me the first two draft chapters, I initially found all sorts of reasons not to: I'm not a writer; I am not a native speaker, and many others. I was probably a little too weak to resist, and finally, the idea slipped through. I thought that even if I couldn't write anything substantial, I could bear witness by telling the story of Kyiv as I know and love it. I drew a map of Kyiv with all my favorite places, and that's how it all began. We opted for a very short style to compensate for the fact that neither of us is a native English speaker. Chiseled sentences. Concise chapters. Many readers tell us they read the book like a film script. We had months of daily Zoom meetings and rewrote the book a total of four times. The text being short, we had the luxury of reworking it several times, and with each iteration, the story grew.
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How much of this story belongs to you?
This story is both mine and not mine. It's inspired by my life, but at a certain point, it took on a life of its own. Some factual details didn't fit the narrative. So we replaced them with simpler, more fluid ones to achieve the same effect as in reality. You can compare it to an advertisement for coffee with perfect crema: in the picture, it's almost certainly shaving cream. Literature works the same way: rather than describing eight inextricably linked events, it's simpler to focus on one more powerful moment. Ultimately, this book is primarily about my country. It also shares the experience of many women living on the border between peace and war, between life and emigration, between loss of meaning and self-reconstruction.
“We all feel the need to reflect when our lives are turned upside down.”
What do you hope this book will accomplish?
That question sounds like you're asking me what I want for my son. We don't decide destinies. I simply want him to accomplish what he came here to accomplish. I would like readers to understand my country, its people, its history, its culture, and undoubtedly, the war and its effects, a little better.