The fifth “Book Country” — Ukraineʼs largest book festival — was held at VDNH in Kyiv from April 23 to 26. The festival was attended by over 71 000 people, and part of the infrastructure was destroyed by a storm.
This is stated in the press release of the organizers.
On the last day of the festival, a storm destroyed part of the infrastructure. Organizers estimate the total damage from the storm at over UAH 350 000.
In total, 71 465 guests visited the "Book Country". Over four days, 77% of them purchased more than 85 000 books for a total of over UAH 32 million, and the average price of a book was UAH 380. On average, a little more than a UAH 1000 were spent at the festival per person, of which over UAH 600 were spent on books, and UAH 400 on entertainment, food, drinks, and other things.
The average age of festival visitors was 28 years. Almost half (46%) had not attended book events before. Among the guests, 82% were women and 18% were men. The vast majority (86%) were Kyiv residents, but people from Kyiv, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, and Khmelnytskyi regions also came. 75% of guests came to VDNH specifically for the "Book Country", the rest came to walk and have fun.
Top sales of the festival
KSD: "Capture Thirteenth" (Chloe Walsh), "Save Thirteenth" (Chloe Walsh), "Secret of Secrets" (Dan Brown), "The Spiced Pumpkin Cafe" (Laurie Gilmore), "Egomaniac" (Vee Keeland).
"Nash Format": "The Comedy Bible" by Judy Carter, "Predestined" (Robert Sapolsky), "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" (Jack El Hai), "Attention Hunting" (Gary Vaynerchuk), "Everyday Stoicism" (Ryan Holliday).
“Vivat”: “Not in Love” (Ali Hazelwood), “Boyfriend” (Frieda MacFadden), “Lazarus. The Snake” (Svetlana Taratorina), “The Snake’s Children. The Parricide” (Elena Kuzmina), “Please Don’t Be Afraid” (Pavlo Belyansky).
"Vikhola": "Dances with Bones" (Andriy Semʼyankiv (MED GOblin)), "From the Land of Ginger and Opium" (Sofia Yablonska), "Boats" (Volodymyr Stanchyshyn), "A Word about the House "Word" (Volodymyr Kulish), "The Shadow of a Dead God" (Yaroslav Shevchenko).
"Laboratory": "The Best "Worst" That Could Have Happened" (Yulia Laba), "1913: Summer of the Century" (Florian Illies), "Time of Losers, or Cloudy with Clearing in the Crimean Capital" (Mila Smolyarova), "All Characters Are Fictional. Or Not" (Yulia Laba), "Dead Vita" (Anna Stadnik).
“Megogo Books”: “Hemingway Knows Nothing” (Artur Dron), “Ukrainian Nationalism. Fundamentals of Ideology” (Oleg Odnorozhenko), “A Thousand Splendid Suns” (Khaled Hosseini), “Mykoltsov Happiness” (Myroslava Kyrylchuk), “Fancy Brunettes and Other Evil” (Yulia Nagornyuk).
“Readeat”: "New Dark Ages. Collapse" (Max Kidruk), "New Dark Ages. Colony" (Max Kidruk), "Four Thousand Weeks" (Oliver Berkman), "Attention Hunting" (Gary Vaynerchuk), "Boyfriend" (Frieda McFadden).
#booklover: "Welcome to the bookstore "Hyunnam-ton" (Hwang Bo-rim), "Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Land" (Victoria Elizabeth Schwab), "House with Roosters" (Victoria Belim), "Anxious People" (Fredrik Backman), "Rock. Scissors. Paper" (Alice Feeney).
"Georges": "Katabasis" (Rebecca Kwan), "Abandoned" (Oksana Kovalchuk), "Jade War" (Fonda Lee), "Farengo. Shadow of the Predecessor" (Vladimir Yeshkilev), "I See Evil. True Crime Stories."
“Stretovych Publishing House”: "Pointy Heels" (Vira Ageeva, Rostyslav Semkiv), "Another Life" (Sofia Sereda), "The Fifth Figure" (Robertson Davis), "We Will Find Our Marcel" (Inna Miroshnychenko), "The Banker" (Dick Francis).
On the penultimate day of the festival, the Book Bloggers Award was traditionally held, and the winner was the collection of short prose by writer and military man Artur Dron "Hemingway Knows Nothing".
The festival also had a charitable component: over the four days of the event, the “Leleka-Ukraine Foundation” collected UAH 595 000, “Book Forces” — UAH 147 450, and “SpivDiya” — UAH 13 578 and 7 books.
A record 1 580 books for the military were collected at the “Book to the Front” stands, and as part of the “House of Ukrainian Books” project, the “Live Media HUB” media holding donated over 400 Ukrainian-language publications for rural libraries.
The next "Book Country" will be held at VDNH on September 17-20, 2026.
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