Andrey Kurkov

Andrey Kurkov on The Silver Bone

This August, we're excited to welcome 'Ukraine's greatest living writer', novelist Andrey Kurkov! The Grey Bees and Death and the Penguin author will discuss The Silver Bone, a thriller set amidst the turmoil of 20th century Kyiv.

Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion.

When Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father's collection of abacuses for company.

Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him - or finish what the Cossack started.

Inflected with Kurkov's signature humour and magical realism, The Silver Bone takes inspiration from the real life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail.

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 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 followed by the novels The Bickford Fuse, Grey Bees, and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv (longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023), as well as his non-fiction work Diary of an Invasion (2022).