Punch and Judy Book Club (V)
Kind of like the Richard and Judy book club... except not on TV, and nobody paid me to say anything nice if I don't want to.
It’s always great to find a new (old) author that you get along with. It’s even better when said author is not in the mainstream and being pushed as the next big thing. Said author is simply doing what he needs to do and is pumping the words out because he must.
So who did I find?
I found Andrey Kurkov. A Ukranian who writes in Russian and with 19 novels under his belt, he’s no newcomer.
I’ve begun here, with The Good Angel Of Death:
It’s great - super easy to romp through. Here’s what I’ve gotten myself into:
When Kolya moves into a new flat in Kiev, he discovers an annotated manuscript hidden inside a copy of War and Peace and decides to track down its author, even if it means digging up the grave of a Ukranian nationalist who died in mysterious circumstances. An exhumation reveals that an item of great national importance is buried near a fort in Kazakstan so when, during his night shift as a security guard, Kolya is threatened with mysterious phone calls, he sets off on what turns out to be a very bizarre journey. Along the way he meets a host of unlikely characters including Bedouins, ex-KGB officers and a spirit-like companion in the form of a chameleon.
So far, so Murakami but where I can take Murakami pretty much at face value, Kurkov is allegorical in the way that Orwell was. I’m forever suspicious that every sentence might mean something else. It’s quite likely that I am too dumb to see all of it (or maybe I’m simply not Ukranian - or Russian come to that) so it’s pretty handy that the book swims along nicely being an odd story rather than leaving me to figure out what it is I’m not getting - although I did get some of what’s written between the lines and I guess the more I read, the more I’ll start to figure out, so it’s a good thing I picked three up all at the same time using that well known book buyers tool aka: “that’s a great title”. Thus, waiting in the wings are:
I’m looking forward to getting involved with him in a big way. I’ll come back to you with the results on all three later. Meanwhile, if you are in the mood for something different (I always seem to be pushing ‘something different’ here but sooner or later, I will get back to books you can chew up and spit out without a second thought), this isn’t the first Russian speaking author I’ve read. That honour belongs to Mikhail Bulgakov and The Master and Margarita:
…and it was superb in every way. (I could never find a copy with this killer cover but it’s kicking about on etsy as an art print and would look pretty swell on the way up the stairs).
What’s it about? Well… Russia’s literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman – a professor of black magic – arrives in Moscow, accompanied by various demons including a naked girl and a huge black cat. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil’s mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master – a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum – and his past lover, Margarita. I mean, come on… how do you resist something like that.
It’s a shame that culture sometimes has to drift into the real world because these Russian speaking novelists are something else and I’m not going to stop reading them - be they Russian or Ukranian - because of recent global events.
Anyway, I think I’m having another phase on what’s commonly known as Magical Realism - and that’s no bad thing.