Customer Reviews

Death and the Penguin

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It's been a while since I've read a novel or seen a film whose ending more than lives up to the preceding plot. Too many conclusions these days fail to deliver on their promise. This one succeeds.

Viktor, a lonely journalist nearing 40, lives in Kiev with an Emperor penguin he adopted a year ago when the zoo gave up many of the animals it could no longer afford to feed. Misha, the penguin, lives a quiet, subdued life consisting of little more than a steady diet of fish and cold baths.

Happily, a newspaper hires Viktor to write advance obituaries: summings-up of notable persons' lives to be kept on file for the day the subject dies. It's steady work for decent pay. The editor even encourages Viktor to stretch out the pieces with a little literary-philosophical content.

One day, a sinister but friendly visitor passes along his own obit assignments for very good money. When Viktor complains about having composed more than a hundred obits but having nothing published, the visitor asks which Viktor thinks is his best piece ... and within a day, the subject is dead! Complications and further deaths ensue.

More assignments come from the mobster ("Misha-not-penguin"), who then leaves his young daughter with Viktor "for a short time," but never returns. Little Sonya comes with a big packet of money, so Viktor is able to hire 20-year-old Nina as a day nanny for her. Soon, this quasi-family is settled in for the long haul -- with their penguin -- except that more and more of Viktor's obituary subjects get killed!

_Death and the Penguin_ is written in a dry, simple style. The chapters are short, the narrative rarely embellished. Though there is plenty of humor, it is not laugh-out-loud but of the wry-smile-to-oneself variety.

This is not magic realism, but straight realistic narrative of people (and penguin) behaving quite plausibly under increasingly-odd circumstances. It's a queerly unsensational story that seems perversely matter-of-fact, but accelerates into a sudden and very satisfying climax.

Ukrainian author Kurkov's slim novel combines modern political and social commentary with traditional Russian absurdist satire in a story about a writer whose pen is literally mightier than the sword. Set in contemporary Kiev, the tale revolves around Viktor, a friendless and familyless 40ish writer who lives alone in a dreary apartment with Misha, an emperor penguin. Apparently Viktor grew lonely after his girlfriend left him, and got Misha a week later when the zoo could no longer afford to keep him. The penguin lives in his apartment, with occasionally cold baths drawn for him to topple into, and plenty of frozen fish to munch on. This is presented so matter-of-factly that, like the best absurdism, it seems entirely reasonable.

Viktor's life consists of sitting in his apartment struggling on short stories, until one day he is offered a job writing obituaries of public figures for a newspaper. These are not to be written upon the subject's death, but are for the paper to have on file and ready to go when the person dies (this is common practice in the news world). The work is steady and the pay quite generous, as long as Viktor is sure to include veiled innuendoes and subtle moral commentary on the person, as directed by the editor. This is all well and fine, until Viktor's subjects start suddenly meeting their end with alarming regularity... Meanwhile, a mysterious mafioso shows up at Viktor's apartment and leaves his little girl and a huge wad of cash with Viktor for safekeeping.

Kurkov appears to be satirizing the society that has risen from the ashes of the USSR, a society where corruption and organized crime have hijacked the "democratic free market" that replaced communism. For example, one of the funnier little threads has the penguin becoming a "celebrity" mourner at mafia funerals. However, Viktor is too detached to be a truly compelling protagonist. He takes care of Misha, but rarely displays any affection for him-nor any of the other characters who come to rely on him. The book is a darkly amusing tale, but with such a cipher at the center, it's hard to really connect with it. Still, for a glimpse at post-Soviet life and
sensibilities and a taste of Gogolesque humor, it's not bad.

A black comedy delivered in an emotionless, deadpan manner, "Death and the Penguin" is a sinister satirical take on life in post-Soviet, modern-day Ukraine. Things take a turn for the better for Viktor, a struggling writer of short stories living alone with only a king penguin for company, when he is taken on by Capital News editor Igor Lvovich to compose obituaries of the various big shots and political big-wigs pulling the strings in post-Soviet Kiev society, these to be kept on file for future use as and when the subjects die. Victor is instructed to incorporate into his compositions, certain loaded material, underlined in the file notes provided him, designed to undermine reputations through insidious innuendo.

Shortly after expressing his frustration to a visitor, Misha-non-penguin, (a Mafia-linked figure who wishes Viktor to write an obituary) that none of his work ever appears in print because none of his selected subjects to-date has died, Viktor is shocked to find that in no time at all, the subject of his best obituary is - lo and behold! - suddenly dead. Thereafter, deaths of Viktor's subjects proliferate with such alarming rapidity that Victor fears his penning of an obituary is tantamount to passing a death sentence, his obituaries of the still living having become in effect, requisitions for future death, each obituary providing per se more than sufficient cause for the snuffing out of a life.

The unwitting dupe of State Security conspiracy, at least initially, Victor has become enmeshed in the violent underworld of Mafia dealings and political machinations where his own life may end being written up in an obituary. Around Victor, the very air seems charged with menace, an air of menace that pervades the novel. Viktor is at the mercy of dark and dangerous forces swirling around him that he can't exactly get a fix on but knows are there, lurking ominously in the background. Entertaining and original!

Andre Kurkov's Death and The Penguin provides an interesting--if somewhat improbable--look into post soviet life in the Ukraine. The protagonist of this wild tale is Victor, a thirty something, sort-of aspiring novelist. "Sort-of" because, in fact, Victor can barely produce a coherent one page short story. Victor bangs out his pathetic efforts in the company of his pet penguin Mish, whom he rescues from the Kiev zoo when the zoo can no longer afford food for the animals in their care.

One day, more or less on a whim, Victor drops off one of his stories at a newspaper. This leads to a job essentially creating a "morgue" file--obits on persons of note not yet dead. Except, in short order, Victors subjects begin to experience an extreme rise in mortality rates. Eventually Victor cotton's on to the fact this is not a natural phenomenon--and the source of the phenomenon may well have Victor himself in his sights.

The book is patently absurd. However, Kurkov makes masterful work of converting the absurd to the plausible. He utilizes several artifices to accomplish this. One is the presence of Misha, the penguin. The notion of a flat holder in Kiev catering to a pet penguin is presented right off the bat in such a way that the outlandish concept seems plausible--and, thusly, Kurkov has established a precedent for acceptance of the outlandish within the context of the story. There is also the exotic (to westerners, anyway) aspects of the locale ands society that Victor inhabits. Really, how many people could locate Kiev on a map if their life depended on it? Yet, we know Kiev is a real place. The mixture of a fact with a created fiction allows Kurkov to create a realm wherein the fantastical seems rational. Kurkov, finally, inserts some subtlety in the form of the malevolent forces arrayed against Victor and his subjects. There is nothing specifically violent or dramatic in the way Kurkov introduces and maintains these forces into the story, yet they are there, are perceived as real. This create a deterministic focus on the part of the reader, giving the sense of looking outside the context of the immediate scene in the story, thus muting the fantastical elements residing there.

The overall result is of an modestly engaging and affecting story that never quite lives up to the potential of its characters, yet stays on with one well after the book has been finished.

I wouldn't say this is a book the average reader would enjoy, but for those who like an occasional dive into the more exotic, Death and the Penguin will be a tasty little treat.

Could it be that a new Russian literary hero is on the horizon? If Andrey Kurkov's modern masterpiece is anything to go by, one could be forgiven for thinking that contemporary Russian literature is dragging itself out of the void. We're not talking about a new Tolstoy or Dostoievsky here, but the black comedy employed by Kurkov is more than a remote testament to political satirist Mikhail Bulgakov. Kurkov's masterstroke is the creation of Penguin Misha, an almost sublime representation of impending death. Despite being a timid and retiring creature, his background appearances personify the approaching danger for his owner Victor who is bizarrely embroiled in a Mafia scam. Curiously, one can't help feeling slightly "in the dark" as to the plot of this novel. The longer it goes on, the more one begins to question the reason and significance of events that have already occurred. It's at this stage that the perplexing, and apparently directionless nature of Kafka's "The Castle" springs to mind. However, fear not: Victor, whose life is continually interfered with from all directions, also appears to be something of a by stander in this novel. The workings of the shady Kiev underworld are as baffling to us, as to our central character. As a result, an endearing empathy is woven between Victor and the reader and here is where the novel really shines.
Kurkov's delivery is sharp, witty and from time to time, laugh-out-loud funny. Yet he still manages to preserve an urgent and menacing quality throughout. Misha and Victor are an understated yet unique double act seldom equalled in other novels of similar genres. Victor is a character powerless within his own domain, a spectator of suicide (his own suicide at that), unable to make sense of anything. The actions of others determine his direction, but as an individual he still has the right to take a way out. Consequently, we are presented with a book of refreshing originality, a direct, almost comical style of the quality one would come to expect from a Russian (well, a Ukrainian anyway!)
(from Brasov Visitor, no. 4/2003 - www.brasov-visitor.ro)

I only heard about this book by chance. . . while sitting next to someone on a flight who told me that he was reading one of the best and most unusual books that he had ever read. It is a Russian novel.

I read it 4 or 5 years ago and it still sticks in my mind. It is the story of a reporter who writes obituaries of people before they are dead. His pet is a penquin who lives behind his sofa in his apartment. The penquin is one of the most charming characters that I have ever met in a work of fiction.

I don't want to ruin the story so that is all I will say except READ IT!

This is one of my favorite books. The story follows Viktor, a struggling, unambitious Ukranian writer as his life forms around him. No matter how surreal the events that take place (the adoption of a sickly pet penguin, getting involved in political murders) Viktor remains calm and detached until the very end of the novel, when he is finally shaken out of his apathetic state. This book is a hilarious satire that does an excellent job of describing the depressing monotony of everyday life, even when it is anything but.

Living in a Russian high-rise with your pet penguin Misha can be a lonely experience, especially when you're struggling with the attempt to write a great novel and can conjure nothing more than the shortest of short prose. So Viktor gets a job, writing the obituaries of people who are yet to die for a national newspaper. Suddenly he has a calling. The Chief likes what he does. He's getting paid, and paid well.

(It's just a nagging thing - he's doing all of this good work, but nobody is getting to see it, people just aren't dying!) The nag does, however, give way when Viktor discovers a pile of the obituaries he has written in his Chief's safe, some of which have PROCESSED written on, and some of which have been given DATES . . . Perhaps the deaths are to begin sooner than expected . . .

Death and the Penguin reads for all the world like a Russian Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Kurkov shares Murakami's fondness for the whimsical response to the generally outlandish). But that's not all: there are elements of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, elements of Magnus Mills' The Restraint of Beasts and elements of Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (that'll be the penguin, then). It reads like Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita as sung by Thom Yorke.

It's comedy, but not as we know it.

Reading Death and the Penguin is rather like being shaken awake in the middle of the night by a stranger who can't decide whether to tickle you with a cut throat razor or menace you with a feather.

This is about the life of a writer in post USSR Ukraine. it combines humor with poignancy, and has the quality of all great fiction --- it makes one feel one is right there in the scene and time which the author describes, that the people he describes are people one knows. It makes the reader want to know what happens at the end of a series of surprising events that take place in the course of the narrative. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for an absorbing as well as thought provoking story.

Viktor lives with a depressed penguin named Misha. Viktor is also depressed despite recently acquiring a job writing obituaries for VIPs in anticipation of their deaths. He fills the obituaries with philosophical musings about life and loss. Since his subjects are still living, Misha's obituaries (like his short stories and unfinished novels) remain unpublished. A greater cause of Viktor's unhappiness, however, is his isolation -- he feels much like his penguin, who stands in the corner for long stretches, staring at the wall. Viktor feels "remote from events and even from life itself." Eventually a government official whose obituary Viktor has written falls from a window and Viktor learns of a connection between his writing, the man's death, and the rioting the death precipitates. Viktor later learns that his editor has a hidden purpose for publishing the obits -- a purpose that causes Viktor to ponder the role of death in a planned economy.

Viktor finds his solitude eased by the presence of Sonya, the four-year-old daughter of a militia officer who drops her off with Viktor before disappearing. Yet Viktor's feeling of seclusion is supplanted by an uneasy sense that the new situation created by his temporary visitor is precarious, that in the absence of any real attachments his respite from loneliness is vulnerable to fate. The addition of a nanny allows Viktor to imagine he is part of a family, but he knows the family -- like much of the life that surrounds him -- is only an illusion.

Death and the Penguin is set in Ukraine, a country troubled by hardship and violence. A sense of menace pervades the novel; people live with the expectation that death --or worse -- is lurking nearby. Yet most of Kurkov's characters are generous and kind-hearted. They have adjusted to their circumstances: "The once terrible was now commonplace, meaning that people accepted it as the norm and went on living, instead of getting needlessly agitated. For them, as for Viktor, the main thing, after all, was still to live, come what might." Perseverance in the face of darkness is a theme that runs through Death and the Penguin. Still, while Viktor has always believed that "a hard life is better than an easy death," he understands why others disagree.

There is a surrealistic quality to some of the novel's events: letters and packages mysteriously appear in Viktor's apartment despite his locked door; Misha is much in demand at increasingly common funerals for members of criminal organizations. Viktor decides it is better not to think about things he doesn't understand. In his world, too much knowledge can be dangerous. The novel takes an even stranger turn toward darkness when Misha requires an extreme remedy for a medical condition. At that point Viktor mourns for the loss of the simple, comprehensible life of his childhood.

There are probably many ways to understand Death and the Penguin, but I see it as an allegorical story about the loss of innocence -- a loss that afflicts individuals as they experience life and societies as they confront oppression. But Death and the Penguin can also be read more simply, as a dark comedy, an engaging story about a man, a girl, and a penguin doing their best to deal with the daily mysteries of life. The reader gets the sense that Misha, staring quizzically at his human roommates, is just as puzzled about complex human behavior as are the adult human characters. I think it would be difficult to read this novel and not derive something worthwhile from it, even if it's only a smile. If I could, I would give Death and the Penguin 4 1/2 stars.