Andrey Kurkov Books in Order
This page lists Andrey Kurkov books in order, with short summaries, series notes, reading advice, and a clear guide to where to start next.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Publication Order
16 books
Death and the Penguin
by Andrey Kurkov
2001
Viktor, a lonely Kyiv writer, lives with Misha, a rescued penguin, and takes a job writing obituaries for the living. When his subjects start dying, his quiet life turns suddenly and absurdly dangerous.
The Case of the General's Thumb
by Andrey Kurkov
2003
A dead general is found hanging from an advertising balloon, missing his thumb. Police lieutenant Viktor Slutsky and security officer Nik Tsensky investigate separately, then stumble into a dangerous feud between rival post-Soviet agencies.
Penguin Lost
by Andrey Kurkov
2004
After fleeing to Antarctica, Viktor returns to Ukraine and is drawn into election work for a mafia boss. His real goal is finding Misha the penguin, whose disappearance pulls him into another web of danger.
The President's Last Love
by Andrey Kurkov
2004
Sergey Pavlovich Bunin rises from Soviet-era obscurity to the Ukrainian presidency, juggling power, family, women, oligarchs, and a troubling heart transplant. Kurkov turns his life into a broad satire of politics and desire.
A Matter оf Death аnd Life
by Andrey Kurkov
2005
Tolya is so tired of his failed marriage and stalled life that he hires a contract killer to murder him. Then he changes his mind, leaving him in a darkly comic race against his own plan.
The Milkman in the Night
by Andrey Kurkov
2008
Semyon keeps waking with no memory of his nighttime wanderings, while other Kyiv lives twist around a stolen suitcase, human milk, dangerous drugs, and a vengeful cat. It is Kurkov at his most sprawling and surreal.
The Good Angel of Death
by Andrey Kurkov
2009
Kolya finds an annotated manuscript hidden inside War and Peace and follows its clues toward a buried national secret in Kazakhstan. His journey brings grave robbing, secret police, desert oddities, and a strangely loyal chameleon.
The Gardener from Ochakov
by Andrey Kurkov
2010
Igor’s life in modern Ukraine changes when a gardener’s mysterious tattoo leads to Ochakov and an old Soviet police uniform. Wearing it sends him into 1957, where romance, danger, and family secrets collide.
The Bickford Fuse
by Andrey Kurkov
2011
As World War II ends, several wanderers cross a dreamlike Soviet landscape, including a sailor dragging a fuse that could destroy everything. Kurkov turns their strange journeys into a bleakly funny satire of Soviet thinking.
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv
by Andrey Kurkov
2012
In Lviv, aging hippies honor a rumored relic of Jimi Hendrix while strange gulls, sea smells, kidney-stone taxi rides, and odd romances unsettle the city. Kurkov turns the chaos into a playful urban mystery.
Ukraine Diaries
by Andrey Kurkov
2014
This nonfiction diary follows Kurkov through the Euromaidan protests, the fall of Viktor Yanukovych, Crimea’s annexation, and the first fighting in Donbas. It blends public crisis with the texture of ordinary Kyiv life.
Grey Bees
by Andrey Kurkov
2020
Sergey Sergeyich, a retired beekeeper, remains in a nearly empty Donbas village trapped between Ukrainian forces and separatists. When he moves his hives to safety, his quiet journey reveals the human cost of war.
Diary of an Invasion
by Andrey Kurkov
2022
Kurkov records the months around Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, from Kyiv to western Ukraine and beyond. The result is a clear, personal wartime diary about family, fear, politics, and daily life under siege.
The Silver Bone
by Andrey Kurkov
2024
Kyiv, 1919. After violence upends his life and Red Army soldiers take over his home, Samson Kolechko is pulled into police work. His first case involves murder, a strange suit, and a silver bone.
The Stolen Heart
by Andrey Kurkov
2025
Samson Kolechko is assigned to investigate illegal meat sales in hungry post-revolutionary Kyiv. Then Nadezhda vanishes while working for the census bureau, and a routine case becomes a desperate search for missing women.
The Lost Soldiers
by Andrey Kurkov
2026
Samson investigates a baffling case: Red Army soldiers have vanished from a Kyiv bathhouse, leaving only uniforms and boots behind. With Nadezhda beside him, he follows clues into cults, remains, and political danger.
Where should I start?
For the classic Kurkov experience: Death and the Penguin → Penguin Lost.
For historical mystery: The Silver Bone → The Stolen Heart → The Lost Soldiers.
For modern Ukraine and war: Ukraine Diaries → Grey Bees → Diary of an Invasion.
For offbeat standalone satire: A Matter оf Death аnd Life → The Case of the General's Thumb → The Gardener from Ochakov.
Author bio
Andrey Kurkov was born on April 23, 1961, in Budogoshch, in Russia’s Leningrad region. His family moved to Kyiv when he was still very young, and Kyiv became the city that shaped him as a reader, a writer, and later as one of Ukraine’s best-known literary voices.
He came to books early. As a teenager he was already writing, and he went on to study at the Kyiv State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, now Kyiv National Linguistic University. He also trained as a Japanese translator, a detail that fits neatly with the rest of his life: Kurkov has always seemed at home between languages, borders, and odd jobs.
Before he became known as a novelist, he worked as a journalist, served as a prison guard in Odesa during his military service, edited books, wrote film scripts, and worked around cinema. Those years gave him plenty of material. His fiction often notices the little bureaucratic absurdities that other writers might skip: the forms, favors, shortages, uniforms, official phrases, and private workarounds that make daily life both comic and dangerous.
Then came the penguin.
Death and the Penguin brought Kurkov to many English-language readers. It follows Viktor, a struggling Kyiv writer who adopts a depressed penguin named Misha and takes a job writing obituaries for people who are not dead yet. The setup is funny, bleak, and very Kurkov. Penguin Lost continues Viktor’s search for Misha through another maze of post-Soviet deals, danger, and strange loyalties.
Kurkov’s books often begin with a simple, almost ridiculous problem and then let it expose a whole society. In A Matter of Death and Life, a man hires a killer to murder him, then changes his mind. In The Gardener from Ochakov, a Soviet police uniform opens a door into 1957. In The Case of the General’s Thumb, a missing thumb pulls investigators into the murky world of post-Soviet security services.
He can also write quietly about war without losing his eye for the everyday. Grey Bees follows a beekeeper in the Donbas “grey zone,” where ordinary habits continue under shellfire. Ukraine Diaries records the Maidan protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the first stage of the war in Donbas. Diary of an Invasion returns to nonfiction after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, mixing political witness with small human details: travel, family, fear, and the need to keep explaining Ukraine to the world.
His later Kyiv Mysteries, beginning with The Silver Bone, move back to 1919. Through rookie investigator Samson Kolechko, Kurkov turns revolutionary Kyiv into a place of crime, hunger, shifting power, and dry humor. The past never feels safely past in these books.
Kurkov has also been active in literary and civic life, including a term as president of PEN Ukraine from 2018 to 2022. He lives in Kyiv with his family, and in recent years has spent much of his time writing, speaking, and reporting on Ukraine for readers abroad.
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