A Son of the Rock

Harvill Press, 2001, 234 p. Translated from the Russian Смерть постороннего (Smert’ postoronnego; Death of a Stranger) by George Bird

This book is an example of why I find translated fiction so attractive. It is difficult to see its premise appearing in a book by an Anglophone author.

Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov lives alone – except for a king penguin named Misha. The local zoo in Kyiv had been giving animals away to anyone who could feed them and Viktor obliged (with fish he keeps in his freezer.) Misha has an enigmatic existence in the book, wandering about the flat lugubriously. But his presence is treated matter-of-factly. No-one bats an eyelid at him: all accept the situation as normal.

Viktor has aspirations to being a writer or at least to seeing his writings in print. Opportunity comes his way through a man called Misha (to prevent confusion referred to as Misha-non-penguin.) This Misha has a murky background but puts Viktor in touch with the editor of a paper for whom he is to write obituaries of people of VIP calibre, from State Deputies to Ministers and factory managers, people who were shady in some way but not liable to normal justice – either through immunity or corrupt judges. After a few of the subjects have died it becomes clear to Viktor that his pieces are the basis for a hit list by an organisation he has no clue about.

Then he is left in charge of Misha-non-penguin’s daughter Sonya, after her father has to disappear for a while, leaving Sonya a large sum of money. Eventually Viktor hires a nanny, Nina, for the child, and she, Viktor and Sonya in effect become a family.

Warnings come from the paper’s editor to lie low for a while and as a result Viktor thinks he may be being followed: Sonya and Nina definitely are. Viktor’s reactions to this read as a hangover from the Soviet era. He knows instinctively what to look for to discern someone  tailing him.

In the meantime he is prevailed on to attend the funerals of some of his obituary victims. Accompanied by Misha, he does so. Soon Misha becomes a desirable accessory at burial ceremonies. Where in an Anglophone novel would anything so bizarre as this appear?

A touch of meta fiction intrudes when Viktor confronts the “fat man” who has been following Sonya and Nina, and he is given his own obituary to read. “His contribution to the political history of Ukraine may well become a subject for research not only by a Committee of Deputies, but by his fellow writers also. And who knows, a novel on that theme may enjoy a longer and more successful life than that of Viktor Zolotaryov.” Is this an invitation to assume that Death and the Penguin is that novel?

However, Misha has become ill and needs a heart transplant. For which the heart of a three to four year old child would apparently be suitable. Viktor arranges for the operation and also to transport Misha to the Ukrainian research station on Antarctica.

Kurkov’s treatment of this surreal scenario is resolutely straightforward; there are no flights of fancy, no purple prose. This, of course, only heightens the surreality of the scenario. Or is the perception of that surreality a result of being a reader from a country whose history has not been authoritarian nor overtly corrupt?

Note: this edition uses the pre-Russian invasion spellings Kyev, Kharkov, Odessa, Donyetsk and Lvov rather than the now preferred Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Donetsk and Lviv.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, a missing end quotation mark after a piece of direct speech, two new paragraphs were unindented, “where he came from and he was after” (where he came from and what he was after,)