5. A man of character

Writer Andrei Kurkov visited Moscow last week to present his works that have already become bestsellers in Europe.

  Today, the Russian-speaking Ukrainian novelist and screenwriter Andrei Kurkov is better known in Europe than in Russia. His novels have been translated into many languages. Paradoxically, unlike foreign readers, not so many people in Russia can boast that they are familiar with Kurkov's works. Representatives of Amphora Publishing House, however, think that within half a year it would be inappropriate for an educated man not to know Kurkov.

500 Rejections

Kurkov lives with his British wife and children in Kiev and spends a lot of time in Europe, where his books are most widely read. Amphora has recently published three of Kurkov's books in Russia.

Kurkov began writing prose at the age of fifteen, but it became more "serious" when he turned twenty. In the course of 17 years he has written many books that nobody wished to publish. He even borrowed some money from his friends, published a book at his own expense and then sold it.

He also began writing letters to foreign publishing houses that he could find, sending CVs, synopses and extracts from his books, which he translated himself. His linguistic education did him a favor. Besides his native Russian and Ukrainian, he speaks English, Polish, French, German, and reads in Italian.

In 16 years he sent more than one thousand introduction letters and gathered a collection of 500 written rejections from Western publishers. Harvill, a British publishing house "politely rejected" his Picnic on Ice, with the reply that it "published only high-quality literature" and wished Kurkov all the best.

Finally, the writer received a response with the suggestion of collaboration and a contract from Diogenes Verlag, a publishing house in Zurich. Kurkov's first book, published by Diogenes in 1999, also became the first one written by an author from the Commonwealth of Independent States that made it onto the bestseller lists in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria. After that success, Harvill had to buy rights to publish the book from Diogenes. The Switzerland publishing house bought rights for all Kurkov's books for 10 years in advance. Some of his books for children were also published in Russia and the Ukraine.

When he was asked if he believed that he could become a writer without constant "self-promotion," Kurkov expressed great doubt about such a possibility. "If a writer is no man of character, he is doomed," he told The Moscow News.

Writer and Penguin

In Kurkov's Picnic on Ice, or Death and the Penguin in the English translation, journalist Viktor writes casual articles and advance obituaries for a paper. He takes a penguin from an impoverished zoo that offered its animals to anyone who could feed them. Viktor took penguin Misha as a pet because his girlfriend abandoned him.

Kurkov said that the penguin, which has become famous in many countries, partly came to his book from the anecdote about police sergeant Petrenko. The sergeant walks with a penguin in the street and meets a police major. The major orders him to lead the penguin to the zoo. In a little while the major meets the sergeant and the penguin again, gets angry and asks why the penguin is not in the zoo. "We've already been in the zoo, in the cinema and now we are going to the circus," the sergeant answers.

The second reason why a penguin got in the novel is because penguins, like Soviet people, live in collectives and they are programmed. The penguin in the book turned into some sort of the protagonist's double and in the end Viktor himself heads to Antarctica instead of Misha. After the book's success, Kurkov wrote the sequel, Penguin Lost.

The two novels are dedicated to the loneliness of a man living among other people. Foreign readers expressed a particular interest in the detailed description of life in the former USSR which formed the background of the story.

As for animals, they are the main characters in most of his books. In Bickford's World, for instance, a rat is protesting against the first unilateral disarmament declared by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The rat throws itself on a cruiser which is flooded before the eyes of foreign journalists. The book will be also published by Amphora soon.