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Author: Andrey Kurkov
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Translator: Boris Dralyuk
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UK publisher: MacLehose Press, Quercus
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Original language: Russian
Rosie Goldsmith, EBRD Literature Prize judge: “The Ukrainian writer Kurkov, who writes in Russian, is a major talent, and this novel, in Boris Dralyuk’s outstanding translation, is another gift to his fans. It is a fast, furious and funny satire of Soviet times involving an active fuse, a petrol tank, an airship and a disparate group of characters journeying across the Fatherland.”
The author
Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warden in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin. His books have been published in over 30 languages. He lives in Kiev with his English wife and their children.
The translator
Boris Dralyuk has translated several volumes of poetry and prose from Russian and Polish. He is Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and has published widely in literary journals. He holds a PhD in Slavic languages and literatures in University of California, Los Angeles, and has been awarded translation prizes for his work.
