March of the Penguin

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Thirteen years ago, Andrey Kurkov strolled along Andriyivsky Uzviz, Kiev's main tourist drag, wearing a large sign that proclaimed: I am the author. The first person to pay him attention was a local racketeer, supervising his turf. But after Kurkov explained that he was only trying to sell books he had written, the Ukrainian gangster was so impressed that he granted the ethnic Russian author free protection. A grateful Kurkov wanted to present him with a signed copy of his book, but the friendly racketeer waved him off: "I'm not a reader."

Plenty of other people, however, are hooked on Kurkov's prose. Today, the 45-year-old Kiev resident is one of the world's best-selling contemporary authors in Russian. He has penned 18 novels — mostly detective stories or thrillers — some 20 screenplays and five books for children. Four million copies [an error occurred while processing this directive] of his books have been published in 32 languages, and the English-language omnibus edition of his novels Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost will be published in July by Random House. (Death and the Penguin has already been included in France's school curriculum.) With their fluid mix of the real and absurd, Kurkov's books capture the topsy-turvy nature of life in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia. "When I write, I enjoy distorting reality," says Kurkov, who now works in a high-ceilinged studio near the street where he once sought customers with his homemade sign.

The comfort of his spacious new digs isn't lost on a man who once had to buy six tons of paper in Kazakhstan and have it delivered to Kiev in order to print 75,000 copies of his first two books. Kurkov's foray into the paper trade put him $16,000 in the red. To avoid any chance of meeting Kalashnikov-toting debt collectors, he struck an innovative deal with a newspaper kiosk chain to sell his books alongside the daily press. Kurkov was also the first person in Kiev to put ads for his product on the sides of municipal streetcars and buses. Once, to save a load of his books from being discarded at an Odessa store, he paid $15 to spend the night with the consignment in a hearse, making sure to clear out before the driver headed off for an early-morning funeral. Finally, after 14 months, Kurkov paid back his debt.

His first best seller, Death and the Penguin, chronicles the unlikely pairing of Viktor, a failed writer in his late 30s, and Misha, a penguin who moves in with him after the city zoo goes broke. Both lonely and depressive, man and bird take a liking to each other. Suddenly, a major newspaper offers Viktor a job writing advance obituaries on prominent people, who quickly drop dead of the very causes Viktor has imaginatively described in his articles. Meanwhile, Misha's naturally tuxedoed presence becomes de rigueur at funerals — and Viktor makes good money renting out his pet penguin for the memorial services of his obit subjects. As the death toll mounts, Viktor realizes he is an unwilling participant in either a major gang war or secret state-security purges — or, more likely, both. Although he learns to accept this morbid situation, Viktor wants a better life for Misha and secretly arranges to send him home to the Antarctic. But when Viktor accidentally learns that his own obituary has been commissioned, he takes the flight to the Antarctic instead.