When Kolya moves into a new flat in Kiev, he finds a book hidden within a volume of 'War and Peace'. His investigations take him to a graveyard, and more specifically to the coffin of a Ukrainian nationalist who died in mysterious circumstances and was buried with a sealed letter and a manuscript. Armed only with three cases of baby milk, which have unexpected hallucinogenic properties, he sets off on what turns out to be a very bizarre journey, meeting a host of unlikely characters along the way including a spirit-like companion in the form of a chameleon.
Author
Andrei Kurkov is a Russian and Ukrainian writer who writes in Russian (fiction) and Ukrainian (non-fiction) languages. Kurkov was born in small town of Budogoszcz, Russia on April 23, 1961. When Kurkov was young, his family moved to Kyiv, Ukraine. In 1983 Kurkov graduated Kyiv Pedagogical Academy of Foreign Languages and later also completed a Japanese translation training. Among Kurkov's most famous Russian novels are 'Smert postoronnego' (1996, translated into English in 2001 under the title 'Death and the Penguin') and 'Zakon ulitki' (2002, translated into English in 2005 under the title 'Penguin lost)'. Kurkov's only Ukrainian non-fiction book is 'Ruh "Emanus": istoriya solidarnosti' (2017).
