The silver bone : a novel / Andrey Kurkov ; translated by Boris Dralyuk.

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Title:

The silver bone : a novel / Andrey Kurkov ; translated by Boris Dralyuk.

Author:

Kurkov, Andreĭ, author.

Dralyuk, Boris, translator.

ISBN:

9780063352285

Uniform Title:

Samson i Nadezhda. English

Physical Description:

288 pages ; 24 cm.

Series:

The Kyiv mysteries ; [1]

Kyiv mysteries ; 1.

General Note:

Originally published as Samson i Nadezhda in Ukraine in 2020 by Folio.

Abstract:

A perplexing mystery introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he is tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early 20th century.

Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the instability, young Samson Kolechko places his engineering career on hold. But in the city of Kyiv Ưwhere competing patrols, black-market enterprise, and mayhem prevailƯ everything remains up for grabs and new opportunity lurks just around the corner . . . When two Red Army soldiers commandeer his home, Samson plays the reluctant host. As Samson juggles his personal life Ưa budding romance with the ingenious Nadezhda, a statistician helping run the city's censusƯ with the soldiers' imposition, he winds up overhearing their secret plans. Deciding to report them, Samson instead finds himself unwittingly recruited as an investigator for the city's new police force. His first case is a perplexing mystery involving two murders, a long bone made of pure silver, and a decidedly unusual suit tailored from fine English cloth. With the odds stacked against him, Samson turns to Nadezhda, who proves to be more than a match.

Subject Term:

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Police -- Fiction.

Corruption -- Fiction.

Meurtre -- Enquêtes -- Romans, nouvelles, etc.

Corruption -- Romans, nouvelles, etc.

Nineteen nineteen, A.D.

Homicide -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Ukraine -- History -- 1917-1921 -- Fiction.

Kyïv (Ukraine) -- Fiction.

Soviet Union -- History -- Fiction.

Genre:

Detective and mystery fiction.

Added Author:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Mystery Fiction Book Hardback	120791003117101	F KUR	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

"With its earthy prose and stunning attention to detail, this stands apart." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Very intriguing and atmospheric ... a fascinating read in the light of contemporary events." -Alexander McCall Smith, Bestselling Author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

From Ukraine's most celebrated novelist,"a gift for crime fiction fans" (The New York Times) that introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he is tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early twentieth century.

Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions continue to vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the political turmoil, young Samson Kolechko is forced to place his engineering career on hold. But in the city of Kyiv everything remains up for grabs and new opportunity lurks just around the corner . . .

When two Red Army soldiers commandeer his home, Samson's life is completely upended. But as Samson juggles his personal life -including a budding romance with the ingenious Nadezhda, a statistician helping run the city's census- with the soldiers' intrusion, he winds up overhearing their secret plans. Deciding to report them, Samson instead finds himself unwittingly recruited as an investigator for the city's new police force.

His first case involves two murders, a long bone made of pure silver, and a suit of decidedly unusual proportions tailored from fine English cloth. The odds stacked against him, Samson turns to Nadezhda, who proves to be more than his match. Inflected with Kurkov's signature humor and off kilter universe, The Silver Bone takes its inspiration from the archives of Kyiv's secret police, crafting a propulsive narrative bursting to life with rich historical detail.

Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

A Kyiv torn to pieces by WWI provides the backdrop for this fascinating series launch from Ukrainian novelist and screenwriter Kurkov (Grey Bees). The action begins with teenage Samson Kolechko seeing his father cut down in the street by Soviet Cossacks, followed by a saber slice to Samson's head that severs his right ear. Alone and stunned, he takes shelter in his family's apartment, only to find two Red Army soldiers quartered there. He files a report about the soldiers' misdeeds, including the unwelcome removal of Samson's father's furniture. The eloquence of the report's language impresses the local police investigator, who offers Samson a job "combat crime and restor order," which he accepts. Bolstering Samson even further is a budding romance with strong-minded yet tender statistician Nadezhda. After a tailor friend and a soldier are both murdered, Samson leads an investigation into the crimes, discovering evidence including an incredibly large suit and a silver bone as long as a femur at the scenes. Kurkov eschews conventional mystery plotting--the eponymous bone isn't discovered until two-thirds of the way through the novel--but the finely drawn characters and harrowing descriptions of daily life in 1919 Kyiv leave a far more lasting impression than clever genre tricks ever could. With its earthy prose and stunning attention to detail, this stands apart. (Mar.)

Guardian Review

Andrey Kurkov's latest novel to be translated into English, The Silver Bone, begins in dramatic fashion. Its hero, Samson Kolechko, is walking in the streets of revolutionary Kyiv. It is the spring of 1919. Suddenly, two Russian Cossacks appear. They chop off his ear with a sabre before riding off. "Hot blood poured down his cheek and seeped under his collar," Kurkov writes. Samson's unfortunate father is cut down and killed. The severed right ear - recovered and placed in a tin - plays a central role in Kurkov's surreal and wildly enjoyable story. Although no longer attached to its owner's head, it hears things. Samson can listen remotely to the conversations of two Red Army soldiers who billet in his home. He is an electrical engineering student, but becomes a detective. The ear is an ingenious investigative tool he can use to solve riddles and shaggy plots. The Silver Bone, longlisted for the International Booker prize last week, is the first volume in a new crime series by Kurkov - Ukraine's best-known writer - called the Kyiv mysteries. They take place just over a century ago during the Russian civil war. It was a period of great turmoil, when governments came and went as rapidly "as the English weather", as one character puts it. Bolsheviks, Whites and Ukrainian nationalists all vie for control of the Ukrainian capital. There are obvious similarities with today, following Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion. Then as now, citizens grapple with uncertainty, randomness and acts of terrible violence. Moscow is trying to swallow Kyiv. Kurkov's protagonists - Samson and his future fiancee, Nadezhda - are wonderfully engaging. The daughter of a KGB general gave Kurkov a cache of early secret police files. These historical records inspired the book. A second Kyiv mystery, The Heart Is Not Meat, will appear next year, published by MacLehose Press. Kurkov was working on a third instalment, The Public Sauna Case, when Russian tanks streamed across Ukraine's borders. For two years he wrote only journalism: a diary of the war and articles for international publications. Recently he returned to fiction. He is writing again in his dacha outside Kyiv. The Silver Bone is a glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux. It is a place of noisy cobbled streets, horse-drawn cabs and early signs of modernity such as trams and Soviet cafeterias, where diners slurp on bowls of buckwheat soup. "Resonant crows" caw in the trees. There are shootouts on the capital's most famous street, Andrew's Descent. Bullets echo into the night, one buzzing "like a tiny mosquito". The tone is consistently droll. Samson, an atheist, finds himself working at a communist police station after telling its sleep-deprived commissar: "I sympathise with you." This is wrongly understood to mean he supports the new workers' state as it wrestles with disorder. Samson begins by investigating the stolen goods dumped by the two soldiers in his hallway. Among them are patterns for a striped brown and black suit. This curiously sized outfit and other period objects help to drive Kurkov's rattling plot along. Samson discovers a wider conspiracy involving a mysterious foreigner and the silver bone of the novel's title. Along the way are several murders, an uprising by prisoners, and Samson's gently unfolding romance with Nadezhda, who works in the Soviet bureau of statistics. An idealist, she hopes for a better future. The novel may be playful, but it poses fundamental questions at a time when bloody conflict has engulfed Europe again. How, in extreme situations, do you act morally? And is it possible to behave decently, when faced with lawlessness and evil? One answer, Kurkov suggests, is the human heart. Love and companionship can flourish amid darkness. Also important, he implies, are good methods and sharp thinking. I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more. Luke Harding's Invasion: Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is published by Guardian Faber.

Kirkus Review

Murder in Kyiv in the Bolshevik Revolution's aftermath. In the first of a projected series, the prominent Ukrainian novelist Kurkov introduces Samson Kolechko, an unemployed electrical engineer who lands a detective job in 1919, launching him into the investigation of a theft that evolves into the pursuit of a murderer that almost claims his life. After his father is slaughtered in the street by Cossack marauders and his own right ear is severed in the attack, Samson finds himself isolated in his Kyiv flat until some of his space is appropriated by two Red Army soldiers. When he reports their theft of his father's beloved desk to the local police station, he's improbably offered a job as a detective to help stem the tide of property crimes in a city that's roiled by violence in the unsettled aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. With relative swiftness but no small amount of personal peril, Samson follows a trail that eventually leads to the discovery of a theft of silver objects, including the eponymous body part, after he survives an ambush and is nearly murdered alongside a soldier who'd been assisting him and a witness in the case. He's aided in his pursuit of their killer by his friendship with Nadezhda, a young woman who works in Kyiv's census office and has become the object of Samson's romantic interest. Kurkov deepens his story with a vivid portrait of Kyiv that emphasizes the city's "atmosphere of fear and danger" and considerable material deprivation in the wake of Russia's epochal political change. Samson and his colleagues must function in what amounts to a barter economy that involves frequent nighttime blackouts caused by the theft of the firewood fueling Kyiv's power plant, along with food and water shortages. It's a bleak, but fitting, backdrop to one man's grimly determined quest for justice. An atmospheric police procedural whose protagonist battles personal tragedy and a tangled system to solve his first case. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

The first book in a new police series by Ukrainian author Kurkov introduces us to Samson Kolechko, an unemployed electrical engineer in the bleak and gritty city of Kyiv after WWI in 1919. Samson is thrust into a whole new life while trying to cope with personal tragedy, unexpectedly becoming an amateur detective, solving his first case, and dealing with political turmoil, convoluted law enforcement, and a budding romance with Nadezha, who works for the census office. The city is dangerous, rations are limited, and a silver femur becomes the heart of Samson's case. Samson relies on not only his sleuthing but also the aid of his severed right ear, which somehow allows him to hear what is going on wherever he places it. Kurkov melds history with elements of magical realism and offsets the grim atmosphere with random bouts of humor, especially from naive and inexperienced Samson. The case concludes with this novel, but tidbits of information are sprinkled throughout that can easily provide a premise for further books in the Kyiv Mysteries series.

Library Journal Review

Ukrainian author Kurkov's (Grey Bees) new novel, set in 1919 Kyiv, mixes elements of grim humor and surrealism. It's a far-from-straightforward policier, as though Gogol, Bulgakov, Ilf, and Petrov had been thrown into the mix. In the novel's first sentence, Samson hears a Cossack saber hit his father's head, splitting it in half. Then a saber slices off one of Samson's ears. Here reality fragments. The ear still hears and transmits what it hears to Samson, as the two Red Army soldiers who have commandeered his flat plan his death. (With Samson dead, they can desert the army.) When Samson tries to report them, he's conscripted into the Kyiv police force to investigate a murder involving a stolen bolt of fine cloth that the tailor from whom it was stolen refuses to take back. Then Samson's partner is killed and he vows vengeance. Along the way, he meets a stolid Soviet damsel; love ensues, sweetly and modestly. Eventually he finds the killer, identified by the pattern of the cloth laid out by the tailor--bulky top, spindly legs. One will never feel uncomfortable en route through this admittedly complicated story whose Kyiv is a complicated place to survive. VERDICT A winning offbeat crime novel that begs for a sequel.--David Keymer