Reading world literature exposes just how limited are our horizons if we don't seek to explore beyond our cosy comfort zones. I was grateful to be reading on my Kindle with easy access to looking up places and names unfamiliar to me, in Kazakhstan and various republics around the Caspian sea. Obviously, reading the novel in translation, knowing very little about its undercurrents regarding Russia and Ukraine, I am well aware I missed nuances and references. I have no idea how to review this rather bizarre novel, my first venture into Kurkov' s writing, but I enjoyed it immensely and will read more of the authors work, starting with the more famous Death and the Penguin.Ī picaresque tale of adventure and travel, musings on nationalism and identify, espionage and drug running, truly a story with something for every taste, even romance? By the end, the main characters do get a 'happily ever after', leaving all matters of state and nation behind them. The ending of the epic is purposefully underwhelming, in that the great search for identity and national spirit amounts to nothing and Kolya's idealism is twisted and used by criminals and state-representatives (like the Colonel who is both) to reach their own ends, as often happens with the ideals of patriots. This balance is quite subtle and maybe not as subverstive as it could have been, but it makes for a clever read. My favourite character is Gulya, his unexpected wife, who competently solves most probems they encounter, also shifting the power balance by simply noting that though her father sent her with him - Kolya himself is the 'present', the one 'given away', as he was saved by their she-camel and given to her. It leans heavily into the absurdity of national spirit and how something so immaterial and arbitrary can create havoc across borders and it also makes a passive fool of the hero, Kolya, a Russian immigrant in Ukraine, a stranger searching for his place, his home in the world.
While it was quite abstract in places and it requires an understanding of a certain type of dry, dark humour and of the geo-political relations of Eastern Europe, it was very enjoyable and quite unlike anything I have read before.
Kurkov's novel is a small-scale epic of Ukrainian identity.
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