Readers may find themselves rooting even harder for Viktor this time, as he presses forward on his odyssey under even more dangerous circumstances, in another brilliantly rich and topical book from a contemporary Russian master. And it’s a tale told once again in a style that’s part Bulgakov and part Hitchcock, simultaneously funny and ominous, nearly absurd and all-too-real. It once again lands Viktor in league with a series of criminals and corrupt officials, each of whom know something of what happened to Misha, and each of whom are willing to pass that information along if Viktor will just help them with one more job. It’s a search that will take Viktor across the Ukraine to Moscow and back, vividly depicting a troubled landscape. Now available for the first time in the US, Penguin Lost sees Viktor grab at the opportunity to return to Kiev incognito and launch an intensive, guilt-wracked search for Misha. But until now, fans haven’t been able to read the sequel and find out what happened to Viktor and his silent cohort, the penguin Misha, whom Viktor was forced to abandon at the end of the novel while fleeing Mafia vengeance.Īdmirers need wait no longer. (Sept.Andrey Kurkov’s first book to be published in English, Death and the Penguin, was hailed by leading critics in the US and the UK as “a tragicomic masterpiece” ( The Daily Telegraph) of suspense about life on the crime-riddled streets of an impoverished, post-Soviet Kiev. Despite its seemingly simple premise, the novel suffers from an uncoordinated plot and an awkward translation: 'Viktor was struck by one full-face portrait showing scar and broken nose to maximum advantage, with the plus of an animal-at-bay expression much at variance with the smug Hollywood smile of the airbrush portrait.' Readers should be prepared for confusion. However, his journey to find Misha becomes a burdensome trudge as Kurkov piles on muddled events and an unmanageable cast of characters.

Whether disguised as Bronikovsky, dealing with a Chechen warlord, or rigging elections for a corrupt politician, Victor constantly longs for Misha. At the behest of ailing Muscovite Bronikovsky, heartbroken Viktor leaves the Drake Passage and returns to Kiev, where, under an assumed identity, he becomes involved in a hodge-podge of shady dealings. Andrei Kurkov is a Russian and Ukrainian writer who writes in Russian (fiction) and Ukrainian (non-fiction) languages. In this supersonically-paced, but ultimately tedious sequel to Death and the Penguin, Viktor Zolotaryov searches for his beloved missing penguin Misha.

Penguin lost andrey kurkov