Andreĭ Kurkov

Victor is depressed: his lover has dumped him, his short stories are too short, and the light has gone off in his dingy apartment. His only companion is Misha, the penguin he rescued from Kiev's Zoo, when it couldn't feed the animals anymore. Misha is the silent witness to Victor's despair, and joins in his celebration—fish and vodka—when Victor's luck seems to turn: he is commissioned to write obituaries. The weird thing is that the editor wants him to select subjects who are still alive, the movers and the shakers of the new, post-Communist society.

Death and the Penguin

Moscow, January 2013. Bunin, the Ukrainian President, has joined other heads of state in an open air swimming pool, to celebrate the Fourth Centenary of the Romanov Dynasty. Treading water, and drinking vodka with Putin, he's on top of his game and in fine health. Yet two years later Bunin undergoes a heart transplant, with very serious repercussions... Rewind to the early '90s; the Soviet Union has crumbled and in the midst of a new independent Ukraine struggling to find its feet, a young Sergey Pavlovich Bunin is on the make. Casting aside a career as a catering manager he enters the political fray and begins the long and precarious journey to the top, at the same time looking after his impoverished mother and enfeebled brother. Spanning forty years, The President's Last Love is Kurkov's most ambitious work to date, and delivers an intricately woven and often hilarious political satire on life before and after the Iron Curtain. A colossus of a novel concerning love, power, corruption, lies and potatoes.

The President's Last Love

Semyon is disturbed. He has woken up in the living room with blood on his shirt, an angry wife and no idea where he was the night before. When this happens several mornings in a row, he realises he needs to investigate. After his friend Volodka follows him one night, they discover he's meeting a tall, blonde woman and accompanying her to her apartment. In the daytime he doesn't know this woman or where her apartment is and, odder yet, someone is watching Volodka watching Semyon. Meanwhile, there are some strange goings-on in Kiev - an unemployed sniffer-dog handler makes a dangerous discovery, a single mother is providing breast milk for an unusual recipient and a vengeful cat is on the loose...

The Milkman in the Night

Penguin Lost finds Viktor Zolotaryov sneaking back into Kiev under an assumed identity to undertake a dangerous mission: He wants to find Misha, his penguin, whom he fears has fallen into the hands of the criminal mob looking for Viktor himself. Guilt-ridden and determined to do what it takes, Viktor falls in with a Mafia boss who employs him in an election-rigging campaign, in return for introducing Viktor to other mobsters who can help him find Misha. And as Viktor goes from mobster to mobster, trying to survive in Kiev's criminal underground, the evidence mounts that Misha may be someplace even worse: the zoo of a Chechen warlord. What ensues is for Viktor both a quest and an odyssey of atonement, and for the reader, a stirring mix of the comic and the tragic, the heartbreaking and the inspiring.

Penguin Lost

Marital troubles? Sick of life? Suicide the answer? Why not get yourself a contract killer? Nothing easier, provided you communicate only by phone and box number. You give him your photograph, specify when and in which cafe to find you, then sit back and prepare to die. Murdered, you will be of greater interest than ever you were in life. More to him than met the eye will be the judgment. A mysterious killing lives long in the popular memory. As with Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, so with our hero: meticulous planning, nothing left to chance. Nothing, beyond that chance is not predictable. Raskolnikov, intending to kill one, kills two, and our hero suddenly wants to live. The setting for this intriguing tale is a snowy Kiev as immediate as Simenon's Paris and Conan Doyle's London.

A Matter of Death and Life

Igor is confident his old Soviet policemanâe(tm)s uniform will be the best costume at the party. But he hasnâe(tm)t gone far before he realises something is wrong. The streets are unusually dark and empty, and the only person to emerge from the shadows runs away from him in terror. After a perplexing conversation with the terrified man, who turns out to be a wine smuggler, and on recovering from the resulting hangover, Igor comes to an unbelievable conclusion: he has found his way back to 1957 Kiev. And it isnâe(tm)t the innocent era his mother and her friends have so sentimentally described. As he travels between centuries, his life becomes more and more complicated. The unusual gardener who lives in his motherâe(tm)s shed keeps disappearing, his best friend has blackmailed the wrong people, and Igor has fallen in love with a married woman in a time before he was born. With his motherâe(tm)s disapproval at his absences growing, and his adventures in each time frame starting to catch up with him, Igor has to survive the past if he wants any kind of future.

The Gardener from Ochakov

Andrey Kurkov's cult black comedy novels are published together. Viktor is an aspiring writer who lives alone, with only his pet penguin Misha for company. The pair find themselves caught up with the Mafia, and Viktor embarks on a dangerous quest to recover his lost pet.

Andreĭ Kurkov

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