PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
"Born near Leningrad in 1961, ANDREY KURKOV was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received ""hundreds of rejections"" and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, was published in 2014, followed by the novel The Bickford Fuse (MacLehose Press, 2016). He lives in Kiev with his British wife and their three children."
A shaggy dog story, Kurkov's speciality . . . Both a pleasure and a testament to life in Ukraine, before. -- David Sexton * The Times * Kurkov draws us with deceptive ease into a dense complex world full of wonderful characters -- Michael Palin A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami * Guardian * A post-Soviet Kafka * Daily Telegraph * A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut * Spectator * Ukraine's greatest living novelist New European -- New European
