Description

When the corpse of a distinguished general and presidential adviser is found, attached to an advertising balloon, lieutenant Viktor Slutsky is sent in to investigate. Meanwhile, KGB officer Nik Tsensky arrives in Kiev for a secret mission.

A larger-than-life hitman, bombs under furniture, a hearse, a deaf-and-dumb blonde, a tortoise and a parrot all play a part as Kurkov evokes a world of secret militia not seen before in Western fiction.

Publisher Review

An ebullient black comedy... Reminiscent of the best Soviet dissident literature * Daily Telegraph * Full of touches of grim insight and tactful surrealism, with just enough of the absurd to suggest a cross between John le Carre's Smiley and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita -- John Burnside * Scotland on Sunday * Kurkov is a fine satirist and a real, blackly comic find * Observer * Kurkov flips from mock-tragedy to comedy and back again, planting the ominous and the absurd neatly among deadpan descriptions of a daily life in denial * The Times * Kurkov received universal praise for his debut novel Death and the Penguin... Kurkov's latest is better * Time Out *