The woods: lesser celandine, primroses, golden saxifrage, the first dog violets. Wood anemones and wild garlic froth alongside the river.

Earlier this week I watched Station Eleven, alternately horrified and charmed. I was horrified by the devastation wrought by a flu that kills 99 percent of the world's population, of the idea of people dying alone in their apartments, cut off from their loved ones. But the world that emerges is still filled with art and parties and tenderness.

Later I thought, while reading Andrey Kurkov's Ukraine Diaries, that the end of the world isn't science fiction or fantasy. Kurkov is writing during a period of intense political unrest between November 2013 and April 2014. Kyiv's Maidan Square is occupied by protestors unhappy with a corrupt government. Shadowy actors are killing or disappearing protestors. Crimea has been annexed by Russia, leading to absurd situations peculiar to borders. The world as Kurkov knew it was ending. He reminisces about a trip in Crimea with another writer, searching for a trailer selling a Tartar speciality: a pastry, served hot, filled with minced mutton. He writes, "For the moment, it is better to not think about those trips. From now on, those Crimean winter holidays will be consigned irretrievably to our family's past."

Still, Kurkov maintains a sense of humour, albeit dark. There are parties, family gatherings, celebrations, and concerts. At the end of the world (as you knew it), there will be, along with peril and destruction and mayhem: memory, art, love, always love.

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