“This wine! It´s a dry white … Your friend loved it.You can drink it on its own, without food, and the dreams it gives you … well, they´re better than any film!Post-Soviet Ukraine. Some have done really well, some less well and to the great majority it is business as usual. A new start, new opportunities and a certain degree of cowboy mentality gives way to all kinds of “private enterprise” making a little on the side. Igor is still living with his mother Elena though he long ago should have par...

Set in modern day Kiev, an elderly gardener comes to work for Igor, a lazy, unemployed young man, and his mother. Igor helps the gardener decipher his mysterious tattoo which sends the pair to the coastal Ukrainian town of Ochakov where they discover hidden secrets. But Igor finds out something else: when he puts on an old Soviet police uniform, he can travel back in time to 1957 Ochakov!I suppose you could call the events leading up to it a plot but barely anything happens after Igor discovers

Kurkov is excellent like always

This felt like Kurkov going through the motions to me. Sad really because I have really enjoyed his books

I quite enjoyed it in a whimsical little way but damn that ending was abrupt!!

Igor is a bit of a loser, a 31-year old man who doesn’t have a job or any plans to get one, and survives on the interest from a small investment. He lives with his mother in Irpen, Ukraine, about an hour away from the capital Kiev. One day his mother hires a mysterious old man named Stepan to work as their gardener and handyman. Stepan has a strange, indecipherable tattoo on his arm but he has no idea what it is. Bored, Igor photographs the tattoo and takes the picture to his friend Kolyan, a co...

3.5⭐️‘Everything seemed slightly strange, natural and unnatural at the same time, as though old black-and-white newspaper images had been scanned into a computer and digitally coloured.’Igor, dressed as a Soviet police officer and on his way to a party, realises he has somehow travelled in time to 1957. Jumping between the centuries, Igor has to survive in the past if he wants any kind of future.Everyone’s eyes have been on Ukraine over the past week. While reading can provide good escapism, I’v...

Kurkov's writing style and even the narrative he chooses to write are always baffling and very indie, far from the mainstream genres that you need to get used to its originality. I enjoyed this one more than Death and the Penguin but it may be a matter of translation to English. The use of time travel is actually original and the portrayal of Igor is such a comic take of a lazy young man that never seem to accomplish anything in life. The other characters could have had more depth. Only dissatis...

After reading ‘Death and the Penguin’ last year, I decided to give this one a go. And I liked it a lot! Each character has their own interesting quirks, the story is interesting and ends in a good place and the comedy is dry and very clever. The historical perspectives offered through both post- 1991/USSR and Stalinist(early 1950s) Ukraine are interesting in contrast and fun to read through this bizarre and mystical fiction. I love Kurkov’s writing now and I’m eager to read more of what he has t...

Sadly, my least favorite of Kurkov’s thus far. I loved the writing, characters, and the story, but the ending left me unsatisfied. I think the author missed a fantastic opportunity to make the 1957 and modern-day timelines overlap and intertwine more intricately. Also, the logistics of the time travel were not explained well enough for me to fully enjoy and understand the ending. I just wish this story was longer and more detailed!

Description: Igor walks along in the old Soviet policeman's uniform, confident that he'll have the best costume at the party. But Igor hasn't gone far before he realises something is wrong. The streets are unusually dark and empty, and the only person to emerge from the shadows runs away from him in terror.After a perplexing conversation with the terrified man, who turns out to be a wine smuggler, and on recovering from the resulting hangover, Igor comes to an unbelievable conclusion: he has fou...

I've been wanting to read a book by Andrey Kurkov for a while. I've heard fantastic things about his writing, and was so excited when I found this book on the bargain shelves at the uni bookshop. By all accounts, the guy is a great writer and storyteller. This book won't quite convince you though.Now, don't get me wrong. I DEVOURED the first 50 pages of this book. I was exhausted and jetlagged and was on my last flight home after 5 weeks away. And I didn't want to put the book down when we lande...

Today's post is brought to you by this big red truck.Astute observers will note that I haven't been lawyering for a few months as Covid has taken a number of legal jobs (including mine) and so I am driving this big red thing. I might call it Clifford, however, unlike the big red dog it has an automatic gearbox which is absolute luxury.Anyway, while the man on the forkhoist has been loading me up I have had a bit of time to read and so this week I cracked out another Andrey Kurkov. You might reme...

3.5 Stars. Fun ideas, interesting plotlines and very enjoyable read. I liked all the different elements, like the time travel, the photography shop, Red Valya, the hacking scandal, waking up and still having the pain of the poison, and Fima's gang, however, I feel like these plotlines and the characters could have been better developed. Interesting and fun, but it didnt blow me away or anything and I feel like it could have been executed a little better, in particular Stepan's story because i fe...

Another dead pan magical realist gem from this modern Ukrainian writer. He somehow manages to interweave a comparison of communist and modern Ukraine, family breakdown and reunion, chasing after a married woman, and time travel, (yes, time travel!) into a coherent and absorbing story! 7 out of 12.

A fascinating novel by a Ukrainian writer whose work I wouldn't have known about without the current insanity of the Russian invasion of that country and its vibrant community of human beings. Pre-dating the present situation, this is a cleverly indirectly political novel about the Soviet Ukraine past of the 1950s and the sheer optimism of a new Ukraine that still existed when this novel first appeared in 2011. It is hard, for obvious reasons, to read it in 2022.

This was pretty lame. I've never read anything else by Kurkov and I don't think I ever will. It just came across as ... written by a teenager - I don't know, clumsy, forced, some weird choices for the dialogue that didn't seem to belong. I'm talking about the style. Maybe it's the translation and it makes more sense in Russian.As to the plot - well, I did read the blurb and still bought the book, so I had that coming. Magic realism when done well is amazing. This was not amazing.