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Friday, 15 January 2016

Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov

A very quirky novel by a Ukrainian author who writes in Russian.  First published in 1996.
An odd story of a writer of obituaries caught up in some murderous account setting and struggle over the spoils of a post Glasnost world.  A cast of odd-ball characters and a sense of everyone wandering through a circus show, blown here and there by winds beyond their control, as well as their own demons.  The most intriguing character is the main character's pet penguin, adopted from a zoo when the post-communist zoo could no longer afford to feed the animals.  Hard to say or what the penguin is.  Unless he represents perhaps the author, sad and lost in a world he doesn't recognize.

More books in the series to read!

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