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Andrej Kurkow, born in 1961 in what was then Leningrad, has lived in Kyiv since his childhood. He studied foreign languages and became a newspaper editor and screenwriter. Since his novel Death and the Penguin, he has been considered one of the Ukraine’s most important contemporary authors. His work has been translated into forty-five languages. Kurkow lives with his family in Ukraine as a freelance writer. In 2023, he was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Buchreihen
Die seltsamen Fälle von Samson und Nadjeschda
Pressezitate
»Andrej Kurkows knows how to make a story entertaining and amusing.«
(author)
»Kurkov's style is spare and effective, drawing us with deception ease into a dense, complex world full of wonderful characters.«
The Guardian, London
»A latter-day Bulgakov [. . .] A Ukrainian Murakami.«
The Daily Telegraph, London
»A post-Soviet Kafka.«
The Spectator, London
»A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut.«
NPR’s Fresh Air, Washington D.C.
»Kurkov writes short, sly, page-turners that specialize in what we might call absurdist noir.«
La Chronique, Brussels
»Armed with the hilarious animal metaphors that populate his books, Kurkow depicts a humorous and scathing satire of the post-Soviet world, and of a Ukrainian society rediscovering itself, independent and riven by mafia, chaos and corruption.«
Le Monde, Paris
»Andrey Kurkov connects the absurd with the ordinary, the comic with the sordid.«
La Croix, Montrouge
»He works with such imaginative power, which nothing seems to be able to quench, with a humorous and tender tone, with protagonists who don’t have their fate in their hands, yet are saved by goodness and kindness.«
El Mundo, Madrid
»His prose marked by humour and a contagious humanity evokes magical realism and the absurd.«
ABC, Madrid
»Andrey Kurkov’s writing style moves between the unexpected, the beautiful and the hilarious –– a tone that permits him to tell a tragedy without renouncing the paradox and the satire.«