It is always good to enter surrealism turned into a novel with a certain cadence. In the surreal there is room for the allegorical, the metaphorical and even the fabulous if it touches. And it is true that Kurkov knows it very well. This Ukrainian writer explores all the possibilities of this dreamlike grotesque, to call it in some way. As a result of the exploration of it, an unpredictable composition is derived with its doses of humor but also with a kind of stripping of reality.
Because, as well as the pretentiousness of Kafka focuses on the alienation of the individual immersed in generality and in certain social inertias, Kurkov's is an assumption of the defeat of the human that arouses hilarity. If the human condition leads to mismatches between the individual and his context, no less relevant is the discovery of the creaking sound of machinery. Pretending to move away from distortion is to approach eccentricity or madness, depending on the fortune of each one.
So let's undress thanks to Kurkov's characters. Let us inhabit that disconcerting place between dreams and awakening. Chaos is served and everything that happens can be the result of predestination or the most aberrant amount of chance. Something that, in the end, can be the same...
Top 3 Recommended Andrei Kurkov Novels
Death with penguin
A strangely disguised novel of a lysergic surrealism bordering on the infantile. Ultimately, a trip to a children's fable has the same amazing background as Viktor's encounter with the penguin with whom he decides to share his life.
Because nothing will ever be the same. And Viktor's pathetic life orientation is likely to get even worse with a spoiled, despotic, self-centered penguin. A Ignatius reilly that little by little he reconverts his master into a servant within a drift of events that are not so distant because of strangers.
At first it was about two lost souls in search of some shared warmth in this frozen world. But when things go wrong, everything that is improvised will always be for the worse.
Perhaps Viktor, depressed and battered by life, must have made the firm decision not to get out of bed until the next ice age. But the decisions about his destiny and his penguin Misha have already been made.
Misha is also depressed: he lets out melancholy sighs as he splashes in the ice water bathtub and locks himself in the room like a teenager. Now Viktor is not only sad, but must comfort his friend. And also feed it.
Everything gets complicated when a large newspaper asks him to write obituaries for public figures who are still alive. It seems like an easy task. But it is not: the protagonists of his obituaries begin to pass away in strange circumstances shortly after he writes about them.
Misha and Viktor find themselves caught up in an absurd and violent plot. A dark and luminous novel, with black and white humor. Like life. Like a penguin.
As the title of the novel points out, which could well pray at the foot of a painting in an avant-garde art exhibition, the scenes point to the tragic feeling that the strangest thing that can happen is that something comes out unscathed from this plot.
gray bees
The bees have been a bit downcast lately. These are bad times for these little insects and their hives full of life. Perhaps the search for an analogy with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict stems from there. Or maybe it's a matter of launching from the anecdotal, from a precious and meticulous intrahistory, towards the most unsuspected abysses with that touch of disconcerting humor made in Kurkov...
Little Starhorodivka, a town of three streets, is located in the Gray Zone of Ukraine, the no man's land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the tepid war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has dragged on for years, only two residents remain: retired security inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a "friend" from their school days.
With little food and no electricity, under the ever-present threat of bombing, Sergeyich's only remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must get them away from the Gray Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. This simple mission on his behalf introduces him to fighters and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers, and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets.
But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees, and his country?
Gray Bees is as timely as the author's Ukrainian Diaries in 2014, but treats the unfolding crisis in a more imaginative way, with a dash of Kurkov's trademark humor. Who better than Ukraine's most famous novelist, writing in Russian, to illuminate and present a balanced portrait of the most perplexing of modern conflicts?
Ochakov's gardener
A surprising story between the uchronic and science fiction. A Soviet-style grotesque that deforms everything to end up showing it in its most insane certainty about old ideas of homelands of any kind. Because we reached the USSR being able to go through any place where the flag weighs more than conscience.
Igor thinks that that old militiaman's outfit is going to be the sensation at the costume party. But when he puts it on, he drinks a cognac and goes out dressed like that, strange things start to happen. Very strange. Everything is darker and emptier. People look at him with real terror.
Anything he says can be overheard by a spy. He soon discovers that this suit allows him to travel through time. Specifically, to the Soviet Union in 1957. That past is nothing like the nostalgic past that his mother sometimes evoked... Although it is true that in it Igor will solve mysteries, get into trouble and fall in love with a woman enigmatic. But who got Igor into this mess? A mysterious gardener. Ochakov's gardener.
Other recommended books by Andrei Kurtov…
Samson and Nadezhda
I don't know if Sherlock Holmes lands in kyiv, as the novel's promo announces. The point is that Kurtov's thing acquires weighty relevance in international noir thanks to plots capable of ramifications that end up rejoining the knot. Grafts of humor that embellish the whole, dynamics that change gears and of course, the twists of the final effect that every author of this type of story must be able to pull off...
kyiv, 1919. The Bolsheviks have taken control of the city and chaos reigns. In a climate of daily robberies and murders, young Samson Kolechko loses his father and an ear to Cossacks, and finds himself almost by accident as the head of the Soviet police. His first dangerous case, involving a severed ear, a silver bone, and an unusually sized suit of exquisite English fabric, will plunge him into the chaos of kyiv and into the arms of Nadezhda, an ardent Bolshevik Samson no longer knows. may separate.
With the air of a classic, full of twists, humor and wit, the new novel from the "best living novelist in Ukraine" (New European ) adds Samson Kolechko to the cast of great contemporary detectives such as Quirke or Verhoeven.
