{"product_id":"death-and-the-penguin-by-andrey-kurkov","title":"'Death and the Penguin' by Andrey Kurkov","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"43\" data-end=\"457\"\u003eA deadpan post-Soviet noir about Viktor, an obituary writer in Kyiv, and Misha, the depressed penguin he has adopted from the local zoo.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"43\" data-end=\"457\"\u003eWhen Viktor is hired to write advance obituaries for prominent public figures, his quiet life starts to tilt into something stranger and more dangerous: the people he writes about begin dying, and power, money and violence start edging closer to his apartment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"459\" data-end=\"989\"\u003eThe book is bleak, funny, chilly and oddly tender all at once — a political thriller with the emotional temperature of a fridge light. It has the shape of crime fiction but moves like existential comedy: bureaucracy, loneliness, corruption, friendship, black-market arrangements, and one very melancholy penguin standing in for an entire moral climate. Good for readers of Bulgakov, Gogol, Kafka-lite absurdism, eastern European noir, and anyone who likes their satire understated rather than shouty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"991\" data-end=\"1296\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eVintage paperback, published 2003. First published in Russian as \u003cem data-start=\"1084\" data-end=\"1104\"\u003eSmert postoronnego\u003c\/em\u003e in 1996; first published in Great Britain by The Harvill Press in 2001. Translated by George Bird. Good second-hand condition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45685695053907,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/thebowerbooker_66.png?v=1781090090","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/death-and-the-penguin-by-andrey-kurkov","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}