Career
He is the author of 18 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, 7 books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and television movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 35 languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew, and published in 65 countries. Kurkov who has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the international media, notably in Europe and the United States, has written assorted articles for various publications worldwide.
His books are full of black humour, post-Soviet reality and elements of surrealism.
Kurkov"s father was a test pilot and his mother was a doctor. He started writing at the age of seven when, after the death of two of his three pet hamsters, he wrote a poem about the loneliness of the remaining pet.
He also produced poetry about Lenin, purportedly inspired by his Soviet education at the time. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, and as a trained Japanese translator Kurkov was assigned military service assisting the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). However, he managed to get his papers changed to service with the military police.
This offered him a greater degree of freedom during and after his service period.
He was assigned a prison guard position in Odessa. Kurkov"s first novel was published two weeks before the fall of the Soviet Union, and in the ensuing social and political turmoil he made the first steps towards self-publishing and distribution. Borrowing money from friends to fund his work he managed to publish independently.
While organising distribution around Ukraine, he would also sell copies by hand from stalls on busy streets.
Like many successful writers, Kurkov had difficulty getting his first publishing contract. He reportedly received 500 rejections before being accepted, in which time he had written almost eight complete novels.