Literalab favorite and author of the Death and the Penguin Andrey Kurkov has written a compelling piece about the protests and government crackdown in Ukraine for English PEN. The opening paragraph, with its account of the murder of two protesters and the abduction from a hospital of two opposition activists, one of whom was then […]
“As in the Soviet past, bright new futures were elusive. Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t come, only that some cost was involved. And in these infant days of Slav capitalism, anything good – bright future included – was extremely pricey. Free, gratis and for nothing was a concept of the past.” – from The Case […]
There are at least a couple of ways to read novels that come in a series – as stand-alone books with similar characters and themes, or as a single novel broken up for practical reasons. In the case of Andrey Kurkov’s tale of the misadventures of failed writer Viktor Zolotaryov and his pet penguin Misha […]
Ten years after it came into print in English I finally overcame my reluctance to read Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin. So what was holding me back all this time? Honestly it was some of the reviews I read – the ones which talked about how the book provided a convincing portrait of post-Soviet […]
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