Penguin Lost
Penguin Lost is Andrey Kurkov's sequel to Death and the Penguin.
Penguin Lost starts off where Death and the Penguin finishes. Viktor is in Antartica on the run from the Ukrainian mafia. However, feeling guilty for having taken Misha the penguin's place there, a chance encounter with a dying man gives him a new identity and it is back to Kiev to find the now missing penguin.
Victor is soon involved with a prostitute kingergarten teacher, a group of disabled Afghan war veterans, a corrupt politician. All this is in the first 30 pages before Victor is off to Chechnya. In Chechnya is where it really starts to get good.
What Kurkov does so well is warmth. Victor is basically good and yet he finds himself constantly assailed by the absurdities of a world gone wrong. Yet he keeps on trying to do his best.
There are moments in this book which should be ridiculous but somehow they work and the last fifty pages are thrilling.
More often than not I have Kurkov's books by my side while I am writing. I open them randomly, pick a sentence, and then use that in my own work. Also I have been trying to emulate his pace. The chapters in his books are very short and yet he packs a chapter with more action then some novelists get in a whole book. They are constantly surprising, pure entertainment, well written and brilliant.
The only novel I have managed to finish this year. And the best book I've read since Cavalier and Clay.
