Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

Born 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.

Playful and ebullient, shot through with magical twists and supernatural turns . . . A reminder of Kurkov's prodigious storytelling gifts and a throwback to an earlier, happier age
This beguiling literary postcard from a recent, now supplanted past brims with the bittersweet charm and rueful satire of the books, such as Death and the Penguin, that established Kurkov's international reputation
Both a pleasure and a testament to life in Ukraine, before
Entertaining and poignant . . . A multi-layered, Chagal-like picture of modern-day Ukraine.
A craftily constructed novel that undermines and transforms itself in a consistently enjoyable manner without the haze of purple prose.
Charming . . . A love letter to Lviv, Ukraine's linguistic and cultural capital
The characters are lovingly drawn and exude the sort of warmth with which the author imbues all of his creations. You enjoy the time spent in their company
Kurkov draws us with deceptive ease into a dense complex world full of wonderful characters
A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami
A post-Soviet Kafka
A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut
Ukraine's greatest living novelist New European