Andrei Kurkov

Andrei Kurkov, born in 1961 in Saint Petersburg, is a Ukrainian author known for his satirical novels and his incisive commentary on post-Soviet society. After graduating from the Kyiv Institute of Foreign Languages, he worked for a time as a journalist and completed his military service as a prison guard in Odessa before becoming a writer. He is the author of numerous novels and children’s books, as well as screenplays for documentaries, feature films and television programmes. His works have been translated into over 30 languages. Kurkov gained international recognition with Death and the Penguin (1996, published in English in 2001), a story with a dark sense of humour about a writer and his penguin. The President’s Last Love (2004; 2007) centres on a fictional Ukrainian president who becomes a pawn in the hands of his advisers – a reference to figures from Ukraine’s recent history. Grey Bees (2019) explores the impact of the war in eastern Ukraine from the perspective of a beekeeper navigating the conflict. In 2022, he published The Silver Bone, the first volume of a new crime series that brings revolutionary-era Kyiv back to life. The second volume, The Stolen Heart, was published in 2023. Samson and the Galician Bath concludes this series and was published in Germany in 2025. Kurkov’s precise observations of Ukrainian society have made him an important voice in the discourse on Ukraine’s political and cultural identity.

His honours include the Nikolai Gogol Prize and the Readers’ Prize at the European Literature Festival in Cognac. In 2014, Kurkov was appointed a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in France. From 2018 to 2022, he was President of PEN Ukraine.

Death and the Penguin
2001

The President’s Last Love
2007

Grey Bees
2020

The Silver Bone
2024

The Stolen Heart
2025

Samson and the Galician Bath
2025