Product Description

Viktor - last seen in Death and the Penguin fleeing Mafia vengeance on an Antarctica-bound flight booked for Penguin Misha - seizes a heaven-sent opportunity to return to Kiev with a new identity. Clear now as to the enormity of abandoning Misha, then convalescent from a heart-transplant, Viktor determines to make amends. Viktor falls in with a Mafia boss who engages him to help in his election campaign, then introduces him to men who might further his search for Misha, said to be in a private zoo in Chechnya. What ensues is for Viktor both a quest and an odyssey of atonement, and, for the reader, an experience as rich, topical and illuminating as Death and the Penguin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36294 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Scotsman
'A darkly comic and offbeat journey. P-p-p-pick it up!'

About the Author
Andrey Kurkov, born in St Petersburg in 1961, now lives in Kiev. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder at Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels.

Customer Reviews

A disappointing and unnecessary sequel.
Firstly, this book will make very little sense if you have not read 'Death and the Penguin', which introduced Viktor and Misha, the penguin who he adopted when the Kiev zoo closed down. The first book is quite brilliant, especially for the maudlin character of Misha, who suffers from depression and is integral to the plot set in post-Soviet Ukraine. A typical Kurkov joke is to describe another human character as 'Misha-non-Penguin' to distinguish him from the penguin.

'Penguin Lost' suffers for the absence of Misha- the plot is disjointed and jumps from one idea to the next - within 3 pages of the start, a coincidental meeting to cause Viktor to leave Antartica and provides him a reason to go to Moscow. Similarly convenient events occur to take the plot through the corruption of post-Soviet politics and the war in Chechenya.

Whereas the first book was effortless and full of mordant humour, the second seems forced, as if written to order. I very much wanted to enjoy this book, but regret that it is an average novel on its own merit and a sad and unnecessary sequel.

Weak sequel to Death and the Penguin
This book was for the main part disappointing, lacking a strong storyline and without the paciness and satire of the first part of the Penguin story. In this story Viktor goes in search of his penguin Misha that he 'lost' in the first episode after falling foul of the Mafia, writing Obituaries for a Government agency, involved in the liquidation or cleansing of society of its criminal elements. There are some interesting themes. Viktor in search of the wretched Penguin ends up in Chechnya. By way of hoping to meet the Boss who holds Misha, he embarks on a period of work for the aforementioned Khachaev, and finds himself disposing of corpses in a decommissioned oil industry furnace!
Something of the worst elements of Stalins 30's immediately spring to mind. There is no emotion or morality ever questioned by author or characters, which is quite disturbing, and no doubt is intended to reflect the moral vacuum of the former Soviet space.
Towards the end of the book, the story loses its way and becomes quite tedious. Viktor thankfully finally gets a fast boat to Argentina with some Bosnian Croats and conveniently marries the ship captains daughter, thus escaping his Ukrainian life which had promised more-and maybe worse- of the same. More importantly the morose penguin is finally liberated, and with a final hard stare disappears from the pages of a book forever.

Lost something in the translation?
As strange and surreal as Death and the Penguin, but not quite as good. The story is a real rollercoaster, galloping along, taking bizarre and sudden twists and turns, but it seemed a bit patchy. Some sections were very detailed, while others just sketched. It almost felt like there were bits missing, or as if the translating was rather perfunctory in places (although the same translator worked on both Penguin books).
Nevertheless, I still enjoyed it, and will read more Kurkov when I get the opportunity.