Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

Ukraine’s greatest living novelist New European
A Ukrainian Murakami Guardian

A hugely entertaining romp through the beautiful city of Lviv, by the author of Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, now reporting widely on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his home country.

Strange things are happening in the cosmopolitan town of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea …

A group of ageing hippies meets at the cemetery in the middle of the night, gathered around a mysterious grave. Among them the ex-KGB officer who means to apologise to all those he spied on; the woman who is allergic to banknotes, and yet works at the money exchange; and Taras, who makes a living driving at top speed over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra, curing paying passengers of their kidney stones.

Kurkov’s novels are often populated by lonely people going through difficult times, and by his own brand of black humour combined with magic realism (occasionally vodka-fuelled). All those ingredients are found in Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv.

Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley