ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrey Kurkov, a Ukrainian novelist who writes in Russian, was born in St Petersburg in 1961: his father was a test pilot for the Soviet Union and his mother was a doctor. Kurkov started writing at the age of seven when after the death of two of his three pet hamsters, he wrote a poem about the loneliness of the remaining pet. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder at Odessa – during which time he wrote childrens’ books – and then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels including Death and the Penguin and The President’s Last Love. His work is currently translated into 25 languages including English, Japanese, French, Chinese and Hebrew.
Andrey Kurkov, a Ukrainian novelist who writes in Russian, was born in St Petersburg in 1961: his father was a test pilot for the Soviet Union and his mother was a doctor. Kurkov started writing at the age of seven when after the death of two of his three pet hamsters, he wrote a poem about the loneliness of the remaining pet. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder at Odessa – during which time he wrote childrens’ books – and then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels including Death and the Penguin and The President’s Last Love. His work is currently translated into 25 languages including English, Japanese, French, Chinese and Hebrew.