The Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov was having dinner with friends at his home in Kyiv on the evening of 23 February 2022, the day before Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Within hours he was advised that his name probably featured on a Russian list targeting prominent Ukrainian figures for arrest, or worse, and he should leave the city. As Kurkov and his wife joined the thousands of Ukrainians who grabbed what possessions they could and headed to the west of the country, he began a stream of articles, speeches, interviews, broadcasts and other interventions – made at home and abroad – to explain the plight and position of his compatriots. He returned to Kyiv four months after the invasion, and the city has remained his base ever since for his continuing role as one of the best known and most assiduous advocates of a free and independent Ukraine.
“I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten. Even so, they have made me.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As Kurkov and his wife joined the thousands of Ukrainians who grabbed what possessions they could and headed to the west of the country, he began a stream of articles, speeches, interviews, broadcasts and other interventions – made at home and abroad – to explain the plight and position of his compatriots.
The very first line of The Silver Bone sees the father of Kurkov’s protagonist, electrical engineering student turned detective Samson Kolechko, brutally killed.
Kurkov first came to international attention with his 1996 novel Death and the Penguin – published in English in 2001 – which showcased his attractively off-kilter blend of satire, surrealism, dark humour, social commentary and rich characterisation.
His 2018 novel Grey Bees (published in English in 2022) focused on the consequences of Russian aggression and was set in the contested Donbas region of Ukraine in the period after Putin’s 2014 land grab, which is often cited as the real beginning of the current conflict.
The genesis of The Silver Bone came when a reader gave Kurkov a large cache of Bolshevik secret police files from the post-first world war period.
Kurkov says the crime narrative, and the figure of the detective in the form of young Samson seeking justice and order amid the mayhem of war, gave him a way of exploring and illuminating a society under extreme stress.
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