In February, 2024, author Greg Dinner travelled by train from London to Krakow, there to explore and research for his latest novel. He spent a day wandering the grounds of the now almost forgotten and rather dilapidated Babinski Mental Hospital, so prevalent in both A REQUIEM FOR HANIA and his work in progress, FRAGMENTS.
From Krakow he then quietly boarded an old Soviet era train, to carry him into Ukraine, a country at war for almost two years to the day.
That journey was multi-purposed. He had wanted to see for himself the outlines of the Ghetto in Lviv and the site of the massacre at Babyn Yar in Kyiv. He wanted to pay his respects at the grave of the writer and activist Victoria Amelina, killed in a Russian missile strike only months before: she who was a fellow traveller at bearing witness; as Greg put it, a spiritual mentor whose death left a hole in his heart.
He travelled too to Ivano Frankivsk to meet young Ukrainian writers whose stories and writing touched his heart. And to Kyiv, there to meet writers and poets, filmmakers and philosophers: to hear their stories. To understand. And to bear witness.
And finally he travelled with other writers to Chernihiv Oblast near the Russian border, delivering books to Russian-destroyed libraries, hearing of life under occupation, witnessing the effects of torture and destruction.
His was a journey to bear witness. But it became more than that. It became a journey of self. A journey of self-discovery.
It is a journey he began long ago. And it is a journey without end.
These thoughts, this journal 'that is not a travelogue', are simply thus signposts along the way.
