"A fascinating series launch ... that stands apart" -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A winning offbeat crime novel that begs for a sequel" -Library Journal From Ukraine's most celebrated novelist, a perplexing mystery that introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he is tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early twentieth century. Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions continue to vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the political turmoil, young Samson Kolechko is forced to place his engineering career on hold. But in the city of Kyiv everything remains up for grabs and new opportunity lurks just around the corner . . . When two Red Army soldiers commandeer his home, Samson's life is completely upended. But as Samson juggles his personal life -including a budding romance with the ingenious Nadezhda, a statistician helping run the city's census- with the soldiers' intrusion, he winds up overhearing their secret plans. Deciding to report them, Samson instead finds himself unwittingly recruited as an investigator for the city's new police force. His first case involves two murders, a long bone made of pure silver, and a suit of decidedly unusual proportions tailored from fine English cloth. The odds stacked against him, Samson turns to Nadezhda, who proves to be more than his match. Inflected with Kurkov's signature humor and off kilter universe, The Silver Bone takes its inspiration from the archives of Kyiv's secret police, crafting a propulsive narrative bursting to life with rich historical detail. Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

The Silver Bone: A Novel (The Kyiv Mysteries, 1)

Literature & Fiction

Kurkov, Andrey

Literary

HarperVia

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: A Novel

"Kurkov is hugely talented. Truly very funny." --Time Out     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 where 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.     Our hero meticulously plans his own demise, except for one detail: what if he suddenly decides he wants to live?

A Matter of Death and Life

Genre Fiction

Vintage Books

A major new novel from the author of 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

Both of Andrey Kurkov's celebrated Penquin novels together in one book. 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. In the widely hailed prequel to Penguin Lost, Death and the Penguin, aspiring writer Viktor Zolotaryov leads a down-and-out life in poverty-and-violence-wracked Kiev-he's out of work and his only friend is a penguin, Misha, that he rescued when the local zoo started getting rid of animals. Even more nerve-wracking: a local mobster has taken a shine to Misha and wants to keep borrowing him for events. But Viktor thinks he's finally caught a break when he lands a well-paying job at the Kiev newspaper writing "living obituaries" of local dignitaries-articles to be filed for use when the time comes. The only thing is, it seems the time always comes as soon as Viktor writes the article. Slowly understanding that his own life may be in jeopardy, Viktor also realizes that the only thing that might be keeping him alive is his penguin.

The Penguin Novels

Contemporary

Retailer-exclusive titles

The Good Angel of Death is a classic, first-rate Kurkov yarn which is sure to delight old and new fans alike. When Kolya moves into a new flat in Kiev, he discovers an annotated manuscript hidden inside a copy of War and Peace and decides to track down its author, even if it means digging up the grave of a Ukranian nationalist who died in mysterious circumstances. An exhumation reveals that an item of great national importance is buried near a fort in Kazakstan so when, during his night shift as a security guard, Kolya is threatened with mysterious phone calls, he sets off on what turns out to be a very bizarre journey. Along the way he meets a host of unlikely characters including Bedouins, ex-KGB officers and a spirit-like companion in the form of a chameleon. From the author of cult bestseller, Death and the Penguin.

The Good Angel of Death

A new masterpiece from the author of the cult classic Death and the Penguin. 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

Product Description When Igor accidentally travels back to 1957, he finds out that the past isn't as rosy as it seems. In fact it's positively dangerous. Igor is confident his old Soviet policeman's uniform will be the best costume at the party. But he hasn'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 isn'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 mother'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 mother'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. About the Author ANDREY KURKOV was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin.

The Gardener from Ochakov

49-year-old safety inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeich, wants little more than to help his bees 
collect their pollen in peace. 
But Sergey lives in Ukraine, where a lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda has been dragging on for years. 
His simple mission on behalf of his bees leads him through some the hottest spots of the ongoing conflict, putting him in contact with combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers, and Crimean Tatars. 
Grey Bees is as timely as the author's Ukraine Diaries were in 2014, but treats the unfolding crisis in a more imaginative way, with a pinch of Kurkov's signature humour. Who better than Ukraine's most famous novelist - who writes in Russian - to illuminate and present a balanced portrait of this most bewildering of modern conflicts? 
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

Grey Bees

Humor & Satire

MacLehose Press

About the Author\nBorn near Leningrad in 1961, ANDREY KURKOV was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received "hundreds of rejections" and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, was published in 2014, followed by the novel The Bickford Fuse (MacLehose Press, 2016). He lives in Kiev with his British wife and their three children.\nUkraine's most famous novelist dramatises the conflict raging in his country through the adventures of a mild-mannered beekeeper. From the author of the bestselling Death and the Penguin.\n"A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami" - Phoebe Taplin, Guardian\nLittle Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a "frenemy" from his schooldays.\nWith little food and no electricity, under ever-present threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.\nBut could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?\nGrey Bees is as timely as the author's Ukraine Diaries were in 2014, but treats the unfolding crisis in a more imaginative way, with a pinch of Kurkov's signature humour. Who better than Ukraine's most famous novelist - who writes in Russian - to illuminate and present a balanced portrait of this most bewildering of modern conflicts?\nTranslated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk\nBoris Dralyuk is an award-winning translator and the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He taught Russian literature for a number of years at UCLA and at the University of St Andrews. He is a co-editor (with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski) of the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, and has translated Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, as well as Kurkov's The Bickford Fuse. In 2020 he received the inaugural Kukula Award for Excellence in Non-fiction Book Reviewing from the Washington Monthly.\nWith the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Quercus Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kurkov, Andrey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kurkov, Andrey

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kurkov, Andrey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Silver Bone: A Novel (The Kyiv Mysteries, 1)

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: A Novel

A Matter of Death and Life

The President's Last Love

The Penguin Novels

The Good Angel of Death

The Milkman in the Night

The Gardener from Ochakov

Grey Bees

Grey Bees