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Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Death and the Penguin

Andrey Kurkov

Bizarre, funny and entertaining, this book will keep you hooked. A deadpan tone belies the extraordinary storyline and the touching relationship Viktor has with his king penguin.

Extract
He lay open-eyed, with the curiously comfortable sensation of leading an ordered, normal life – for which the essential requisites: wife, child, pet penguin, were present; and obviously artificial as this foursome was, Viktor shut his eyes to this fact for the sake of his feeling of comfort and a temporary illusion of happiness.
Parallels
  • The Joke by Milan Kundera
  • The Leopard by Giuseppe Lampedusa
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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