Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay writer before becoming a novelist. Death and the Penguin, his first novel to appear in English, was an international bestseller and has been translated into forty-two languages. In addition to his fiction for adults and children, he has become a commentator and journalist reporting on Ukraine for the international media. He lives in Kyiv with his British wife and their three children.

"Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions continue to vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the political turmoil, young Samson Kolechko is forced to place his engineering career on hold. But in the city of Kyiv everything remains up for grabs and new opportunity lurks just around the corner. When two Red Army soldiers commandeer his home, Samson's life is completely upended. But as Samson juggles his personal life -including a budding romance with the ingenious Nadezhda, a statistician helping run the city's census- with the soldiers' intrusion, he winds up overhearing their secret plans. Deciding to report them, Samson instead finds himself unwittingly recruited as an investigator for the city's new police force. His first case involves two murders, a long bone made of pure silver, and a suit of decidedly unusual proportions tailored from fine English cloth. The odds stacked against him, Samson turns to Nadezhda, who proves to be more than his match."--Provided by publisher.