Episode description

Andrey Kurkov discusses his darkly comic novel Death and the Penguin with Harriett Gilbert, and responds to listeners' questions from around the world. The book is set in the grey and deeply surreal world of the former Soviet republic, in which aspiring writer Viktor, who lives with his pet penguin Misha, is asked to write obituaries for Ukrainian VIPs. But the VIPs are still alive - for now. His pride turns to terror as he realises that both he and Misha have been drawn into a trap, from which there seems to be no escape.

The programme is recorded live in his native Ukraine, at the historic Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kiev.*

*(Bulgagov was a Kiev-born Russian writer and playwright from the first half of the 20th Century)

(Photo: Andrey Kurkov sitting next to his literary hero, Mikhail Bulgakov, in Kiev. Credit: Daniel Simons)