A review by octavia_cade
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

dark funny medium-paced

4.0

This is very black-humoured, and I could see the twist as to the obituaries a mile off, but the penguin is so entertaining that I just don't care. Viktor, a not especially successful writer, is engaged to produce obituaries for people who aren't yet dead. He also has a penguin - an emperor penguin, no less, called Misha, obtained from the zoo in Kyiv after they could no longer afford to feed him. A journalist's small apartment is no place for a metre tall penguin, and Eastern Europe is just too hot anyway. Misha is, naturally, depressed. It shouldn't be funny but it is... and the penguin, it seems, is one of the few lines of defence between Viktor and the local Mafia.

It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, but it is satire, and it's enormously entertaining. I don't think the end was quite as strong as the rest of it, perhaps, but I've just found out that there's a sequel, so fingers crossed that Viktor and Misha are reunited for more frozen fish and political disaster.