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Sequel to “Death and the Penguin” and much less successful – reads like an unsuccessful and hastily assembled Hollywood sequel to a surprise hit film. Viktor returns from the Antarctic, firstly working as a writer for a politician, then via a short stint in Moscow and then to Chechnya where he works in a makeshift crematorium used by the two sides in the conflict to cremate their own and the other sides dead, all the while on the search for Misha (who is owned by the gangster boss ultimately beh...

‘It took Viktor three days to recover from the four spent crossing Drake Passage.’At the end of ‘Death and the Penguin’, Viktor was fleeing vengeance on an Antarctica-bound flight which had been booked for Misha the penguin. Viktor has an opportunity to return to Kiev with a new identity. Once back in Kiev, Viktor tries to find Misha. Viktor feels bad (as he should) for abandoning poor Misha who was recovering from a heart transplant and who would really have been much happier in Antarctica.So,

The Penguin novels and in particular, Death of the Penguin are still probably the only books by Andrey Kurkov that the majority of people in the West have read. So, I’m slightly puzzled by my own response to the first novel as well as this follow-up. Sure, there is a much to admire – it’s a scabrous satire on modern life in what was once the USSR – haphazard Mafiosi, tackiness and extreme polarisation of wealth all form a large part of the narrative while there is an atmosphere of high farce t...

“For just one brief, blissful moment he was back standing with Penguin Misha at the grave of some departed bigwig, sun streaming down while some nearest and dearest delivered words having no effect on him or Misha, who were outside it all, Misha part of the ritual, he part of Misha. And there they’d stand, unfeelingly waiting for it to be done with - as if they were immortal.”While I truly enjoyed “Death and the Penguin”, I fear this is one of those sequels that never should have been written. T...

Just like Death and the Penguin, Penguin Lost is utterly absurd. In his article for The Telegraph, Tim Martin called Death and the Penguin “a sort of warped cross between Dostoyevsky and Happy Feet” and I have no choice but to: a) die from laughter; and b) wholeheartedly agree. In this unexpectedly good sequel, Victor and Misha are separated with very little hope of finding each other ever again. Having successfully escaped from the Mafia, Viktor embarks on a journey to locate his faithful frien...

"Penguin Lost" the much anticipated sequel to the marvelous "Death and The Penguin", more than just lives up to the expectations built around its release. Andrey Kurkov with his Dostoyevskyian absurdity and a defiant style of story telling picks off without a pause from where he left his readers gasping. Viktor is guilt ridden after abandoning his unusual pet - an emperor penguin named Misha, - and sailing off to Antartica to save his own life. This exquisite irony of a penguin staying in a city...

What do you do if you've slipped out of post Soviet Ukraine, posing as the penguin, and you miss your pet? Well,if you are Viktor Zolontaryov, you sneak back in under an asssmued name and search the mafia underworld to find him. You help rig an election...sort of, try not to get caught....oops....and then....when you do....Kiev's criminal underworld is not really happy to cooperate with Viktor, so this is not going to be easy, but then nothing has been easy for Viktor, ever!He still has a child

It’s never easy to rate a translation. I found it awkward and very confusing at times - I wouldn’t give it more than 2.5 stars. Halfway through the book I had to switch to the original version in Russian which I thoroughly enjoyed until nearly the end - I thought that the happy end was far fetched and disappointing.

The middle third of this book disappointed me most, with hard to follow speech, jerky pacing and some plot lines that I thought untethered to the overall story. The wrapping up to the ending happened about 50 pages before the actual end and then the ~controversy~ that stood in the way of the "alluded-to ending" happened too late and was rectified too fast and too easily"Apart from these issues it was a nice little read

I really enjoyed Death and the Penguin. It was original, amusing and outlandish, so naturally I wanted to read the sequel. Kurkov is never one to do things by halves and Penguin Lost opens to find Viktor a world away from Misha the penguin in Antarctica. (Yes, that’s right – man in Antarctica, penguin in Ukraine). Viktor is asked to give a credit card and letter to the wife of a somewhat shady Russian character dying in Antarctica, so back to the northern hemisphere he goes. Before he can get to...

Ah, that difficult second penguin! Sequels are often tricky things, expanding and adding to a story whilst trying not lose too much of the dynamic that made the first so great. Penguin Lost certainly has a good go at it, introducing elements of the dark arts of Ukrainian electioneering and the Chechen War to create a much broader and sociopolictically enlightening book. However with the loss of the penguin comes also a certain loss of the humanity, characters and actions seeming less likely and

Think of how Gogol would have written his satires in the 21st century and you come pretty close to Andrey Kurkov's tale of Ukrainian writer searching for his lost penguin. Viktor Zolotaryov, who had been in the run from mobsters, returns to Kiev to find that his penguin, Misha, has been taken away by another mobster. Forced to navigate the Ukrainian underworld in order to track Misha down, even becoming the PR writer for a mobster-turned-political candidate, Viktor eventually learns that the pen...

I was thrilled to lead the second part of Kurkov's penguin series. I was a little worried by the poor reviews on here, but I was very happy with this book.The book is a perfect continutation of post-Soviet surrealism, and it intertwines political corruption and intrigue together with the rise of Moscow as an expensive billionaire's playground, and then the war in Chechnya. I found that the novel was very topical for the time that it took place and the author did a superb job of keeping the story...

I enjoyed Death and the Penguin, but read it awhile ago, so felt a bit at sea when I started this book. I didn't remember the characters, or understand the situation that Viktor found himself in. So this may have affected my enjoyment of the book.It might have also been just where my head was at when I read the different books, because when I read my review of the first one, it doesn't sound like it was wildly different from this one, it's just that I didn't enjoy it as much. I found the tone fl...