Friday 3 March 2023
Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov
I've been reading a Ukrainian novel recently. Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. It is set in the 1990s, when Ukraine was still a fledgling country away from direct Russian influence although the set-up is dark with some ominous and recognisable repeating patterns.
Viktor Zolotaryov is a frustrated writer, whose short stories are too short and uneventful to be published. Then a newspaper editor unexpectedly offers Viktor a job as an obituarist, with reasonable pay, and working from home. He has to select (and later is given list of) powerful figures from the Ukrainian elite and prepare their obituaries ready for their death and, as the volume of obituaries increases, Viktor realises that his obituaries seem to foreshadow the subject's death.
It's a mafia style situation where individuals from the Ukrainian elite are systematically bumped off and Viktor's editor has a timeline of when this is to occur.
Everything is corrupt and in a state of collapse. The Kyiv zoo has to give away its animals to members of the public because it can no longer care for them. That's how Viktor acquires Misha, a King penguin, and just one of the increasing cast of people who he houses in his shabby apartment.
I've found it to be a readable novel and although I haven't quite finished it yet, I can see where its bleakness is going.
Misha the penguin, is a proxy symbolising the confusion and loss of community that characterises post-Soviet Ukraine. Just as Misha the penguin is cut off from his natural, collective and co-operative penguin-world so Viktor is struggling to survive in a city that is confusing and unwelcoming to its human population. The gang warfare is frequently off-page and implied, but the all-too-real obituaries (obelisks) are never in short supply and always have the right key phrases highlighted. To be a disliked politician, a protesting artist or a mob boss was bad news if you were in Viktor's unquestioning file, consider your days were numbered.
It is said to be Ukrainian Absurdism, but nowadays, I wonder.
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