Death And The Penguin

It's a race, a race I intend to win - who out of Krissa and I will get to blog about Andrey Kurkov's 'Death and the Penguin' first?

ME I tell you, ME!
Buahaha.

I first heard the ridiculously excellent Ukrainian-accented voice of Andrey Kurkov in the 'Books and Writing' podcast from ABC Radio National (of Australia. As you do.). As an interview programme, the show tends to depend heavily on the character of the author they interview, and Andrey Kurkov is incredibly charismatic.

(Listen to the programme here through your browser window, download it here, or read this transcript)

The podcast is in fact intended to promote another book, 'A Matter Of Death And Life', but you can't help, if you listen, but notice one story that leaps out, even amongst the anecdotes of mafia protection and hearse hire in the Ukraine, and that's the plot of Death and the Penguin. I finished reading it the other evening, and Krissa is currently speed-reading her way through.

Read this book!

Ingredients:
1. An obituary writer.
2. A penguin with depression.
3. The mafia.
4. Alcohol.

Viktor is a man, and a struggling would-be writer. Misha is a King Penguin, adopted by Viktor when the Kiev Zoo went bankrupt and gave away its animals to anyone who could afford to feed them. Viktor gets a gig writing in-advance obituaries for a national newspaper, attracting the attentions of a mafia hood, also called Misha. Misha-non-penguin needs some obituaries written himself, and after a while Viktor and Misha-non-penguin become friends. After a while, when Viktor complains that after months of writing work he has yet to see himself in print, Misha-non-penguin does him a favour and, shall we say, creates a need for one of Viktor's pieces...

Even if you have no intention of reading this book (which you should), listen to the podcast or read the transcript - Kurkov's tales of trying to get his books published independently after the fall of the Soviet Union are really, really funny.

I'm going to be keeping an eye out for more of his stuff, because it's bloody brilliant.

Death and the Penguin isn't exactly on mass release, as you can probably tell from the Amazon Marketplace link, and the translation from the Russian is a bit...English English, but it's well worth the effort it will take to get your hands on a copy. The one Krissa and I have read is from the New York Public Library, who have a few copies you can order delivered to your local branch.

Apparently Misha the Penguin makes an appearance in another of his books, but which I'm not sure. That'll be my next target...