In an interview with the magazine french
Lire: the Russian novelist
Andrei Kourkov explains how the idea for his novel
The penguin cames to his mind: she comes from a story, a kind of running gag about a
penguin adopted as a pet by a policeman. He met his chief who ordered him to take the penguin to the zoo, what the police before continuing her round with a penguin. Its leader is reviewing the overall and this time he gets mad: I
said you had yet to take the penguin to the zoo, what the policeman responds:
We went around the zoo and now we are going to the cinema. This penguin named
Micha. It was adopted as a pet by
Victor Zolotarev, a journalist and writer, narrator of the story. He has just found a job as a columnist in a newspaper funeral
Kiev. He writes death notices without really knowing why. This sets the tone: the fable game turns into a police plot. We discover a
world absurd, a world corrupted by bribes, writers are turning to politics and all means are used to ensure its existence. The presence of
Micha outlandish brings an element in the life of
Victor Zolotarev. The animal acts as a mirror to his master. It is a reflection of his silence, his boredom and his sadness. The narrator becomes the victim of his own naivety. The penguin becomes an attraction, it never fails to attract the interest of visitors to
Victor who rents the bird acccompagner the morticians at the cemetery.
Micha is the victim of a kidnapping, his
master sees that fire. The
story ends with the disappearance of
Micha while
Victor finds himself alone, helpless and separated from his penguin. He realizes just what is happening to him. He dares to believe, but it must face the facts: it has to be cheated. It entered into a contract with
Micha casualty. This lies at the heart of another novel
Andrei Kourkov:
The penguins have never cold following
the Penguin. The fictional universe
Andrei Kourkov testament to the climate of the former
Soviet Union. It is not unlike another great master of the absurd and Russian literature of the nineteenth century, his spiritual ancestor,
Nikolai Gogol, author of
Dead Souls. World interlope corrupted by money and crime, opening up an economy lopsided, more than dubious and dishonest, fraudulent and egregious, trade in black and absence of any moral value, that the current version of the soul according to Russian
Andrei Kourkov , born in
Kiev in 1961. This writer has a zest for languages (he speaks nine) and animals (he wrote
The Chameleon). If novels behind
Andrei Kourkov often lurks a fable behind it lies a rich variety of moral lessons can be drawn from those of his choice.
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