The overflowing imagination of Andrew Kurkov, the writer of children's literature, out of control in this novel, although for adults, strangely disguised as a lysergic surrealism bordering on the infantile.
Deep down, a trip to a children's fable has the same amazing background as Viktor's meeting with the penguin with whom he decides to share his life.
Because nothing will ever be the same. And Viktor's pathetic life orientation is likely to get even worse with a spoiled, despotic, self-centered penguin. A Ignatius reilly that little by little he reconverts his master into a servant within a drift of events that are not so distant because of strangers.
At first it was about two lost souls in search of some shared warmth in this frozen world. But when things go wrong, everything that is improvised will always be for the worse.
Perhaps Viktor, depressed and battered by life, must have made the firm decision not to get out of bed until the next ice age. But the decisions about his destiny and his penguin Misha have already been made.
Misha is also depressed: he lets out melancholy sighs as he splashes in the ice water bathtub and locks himself in the room like a teenager. Now Viktor is not only sad, but must comfort his friend. And also feed it.
Everything gets complicated when a large newspaper asks him to write obituaries for public figures who are still alive. It seems like an easy task. But it is not: the protagonists of his obituaries begin to pass away in strange circumstances shortly after he writes about them.
Misha and Viktor find themselves caught up in an absurd and violent plot. A dark and luminous novel, with black and white humor. Like life. Like a penguin.
As the title of the novel points out, which could well pray at the foot of a painting in an avant-garde art exhibition, the scenes point to the tragic feeling that the strangest thing that can happen is that something comes out unscathed from this plot.
You can now buy the novel "Death with Penguin", by Andrei Kurkov, here:
