Originally published in 1996, Andrey Kurkov’s novel Death and the Penguin, which follows a humble obituarist and his pet penguin in post-communist Ukraine, finds tenderness and comedy in bleak circumstances. Lies are endemic, and murder is commonplace, but there is enough warmth and humour for one to feel the power of evil in the knowledge of the goodness against which it works.
Kurkov has an obvious interest in the tension between human (and animal) vulnerability and human (and animal) strength. God knows we are vulnerable. The Silver Bone — the first novel in the Kyiv Mysteries series, published in 2020 — begins with the idle butchering of Samson Kolechko’s distinguished father. Having already lost his mother and sister — as well as his ear, in
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