Yuriy Andrukhovych was born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He began publishing in literary journals in 1982. In 1985, together with Viktor Neborak and Oleksandr Irvanets, he founded the popular literary performance group "Bu-Ba-Bu" (Burlesque-Bluster-Buffoonery).

Andrukhovych's first book of poetry, Sky and Squares, appeared in 1985. His reputation as a prose writer was established after the publication of his three short novels Recreations (1992; the English edition 1998), The Moscoviad (1993; the English edition 2008), and Perversion (1996; published in English as Perverzion in 2005).

Andrukhovych often draws upon his travels in central and eastern Europe to muse over the peculiarities of Europe’s past and current cultural landscapes, focusing much of his attention on the eastern regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, most notably, his native Galicia.