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Penguin Lost
Victor cannot stand life at the Antarctic polar station, where he has fled to escape the mafia, much longer. He can find no peace. The dying banker, a fellow fugitive to the land of eternal ice, has entrusted Victor with his will. And he is preoccupied by thoughts of the debt he owes to the penguin Misha. Victor flies back to Moscow, to little Sonja and her nanny, whose wages Victor pays and with whom he once had a relationship. But Victor's key no longer fits the lock of his house and, as Sonja confides in him, there is now ›another uncle‹ in his bed. Victor is offered temporary lodgings – and more besides – by the banker's widow, to whom he delivers the will. But the good life cannot deter Victor from his search for Misha. In the clinic where Misha was recently operated upon, they know only that the penguin was collected by two men in black suits. Victor has a feeling that something is awry. At the cemetery where the mafia bury their ›family‹, Victor is on the lookout for funeral processions, hoping to find Misha – and discovers a promising lead…
»Delicious… when Viktor finally finds Misha it is as if Woody Allen had gone to meet Kurtz.«
»A striking portrait of post-Soviet isolation…. In this bleak moral landscape Kurkov manages to find ample refuge for his dark humor.«