A tragicomic masterpiece ? Daily TelegraphThe deadpan tone works perfectly and it will be a hard-hearted reader who is not touched by Viktor's relationship with his unusual pet ? The TimesA black comedy of rare dinstinction and the penguin is an invention of genius ? SpectatorA chilling black comedy ? GuardianA striking portrait of post-Soviet isolation... In this bleak moral landscape Kurkov manages to find ample refuge for his dark humour ? New York Times Andrey Kurkov is a writer, journalist, and the current president of PEN Ukraine. He was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world's media, notably in the U.K., France, Germany, and the United States.