Sunday, September 21, 2025

The Silver Bone

by Andrey Kurkov

translated by Boris Dralyuk

published by HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright 2020 (Russian) English Translation 2024

288 pages

ISBN 978-0-06-335228-5

Summary by Kathy Hamara 

 About the Author:

Andrey Kurkov has been referred to as Ukraine’s most famous living author. He was born near Leningrad in 1961. His father was a pilot with the Soviet Air Force and when the unit was decommissioned, he moved his family to Kyiv where he found work at an aviation factory. Andrey was 1 or 2 years of age. Kurkov still lives in Kyiv. He holds a Ukrainian passport.

Kurkov studied at the Kyiv Institute of Foreign Languages, graduating in 1983. He speaks seven languages (Russian, Ukrainian, German, Japanese, English, Polish and French) and trained as a Japanese translator.  He writes in Russian, his mother tongue, drawing the ire of some Ukrainian nationalists. He worked diverse jobs including journalist, prison warden, cameraman, screenwriter and writer of children’s stories before becoming a novelist and self-publishing.

Kurkov’s writing features satirical portrayals of post-Soviet life, corruption and the complexities of Ukrainian identity and society. He is a prominent commentator and journalist, democracy advocate and critic of Putin. He is on the Kremlin list of Ukrainian activists. He has at least 19 books to his name. The Silver Bone was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024.

 Notable Works:

2001 - Death and the Penguin

2003 - Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

2014 - Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kyiv

2016 – The Bickford Fuse

2020 - Grey Bees

2022 - Diary of an Invasion

2025 – The Stolen Heart, Book 2 of the Kyiv Mysteries (Samson Kolechko must rescue his kidnapped fiancĂ©e while investigating the illegal sale of meat in the lawless 1920’s Kyiv. Based on a real-life case.)

In his novels, much has been drawn from Bolshevik secret police files from WWI which were passed along to him by a reader. His novels have been translated into 41 languages.

About the Translator Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk was born in 1983 in Odesa. He left Odesa at the age of 8 but has maintained close ties. He is a Ukrainian-American writer, editor, translator and university professor of Russian literature who holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from UCLA. He published a poetry collection in 2022 – My Hollywood and Other Poems and has translated at least 18 books including a Ukrainian children’s story Who Will Make the Snow? which was included in the New York Times list of best children’s books of 2023. 

Synopsis

The Silver Bone is a historical mystery novel set in the chaotic Kyiv of 1919 following WWI and the Russian Revolution. The city is controlled by the Red Army and beleaguered by different factions vying for control of Ukraine. The opening scene is dramatic and bloody as Samson Kolechko’s father is murdered by Soviet Cossacks in front of him. Samson’s ear is sliced off by a sabre, though he manages to retrieve it and store it in a tin box in his father’s desk. He is now a young, orphaned, unemployed electrical engineer living alone until rooms and furniture in his flat are requisitioned and two Red Army soldiers move in. He soon discovers the magical properties of his severed ear: he can hear everything through it, even at a distance.

When his father’s desk is mistakenly requisitioned, Samson heads to the police station to reclaim it, only to be hired as an investigator by the supervisor who admires his superior writing skills. His first case is focused on the investigation of the two soldiers in his flat who have amassed bags of stolen goods.

The yard sweeper’s widow in the flat below serves as matchmaker and introduces Samson to Nadezhda who is a single statistician drawing up the city census. She becomes a love interest and assists Samson in solving cases. He follows a trail that eventually leads to the discovery of a theft of silver objects including a silver femur replica and a man’s suit of unusual proportions. He eventually solves the murder of a soldier and a tailor.

Kurkov deepens his story with a vivid portrait of Kyiv that emphasizes the city’s atmosphere of fear, danger and considerable material deprivation including food, firewood, electricity and water. The Silver Bone is at once dark, comical, ironic and absurd with an affable protagonist, finely drawn characters and descriptions of daily life in Kyiv 1919 and the endurance of the human spirit.

Kurkov/Dralyuk Interviews and Articles

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/magazine/ukraine-andrey-kurkov.html

https://www.guernicamag.com/andrey-kurkov-the-border-between-real-and-surreal-lies-somewhere-else/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Kurkov

https://chytomo.com/en/people-who-go-into-battle-with-a-joke-on-their-lips-interview-with-boris-dralyuk/

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Putin’s Assassin

 

Putin's Assassin

by Victor Malarek

Published by Freisen Press

July 4, 2024

288 pages

ISBN-13 978-1038313942

Review by Lesia Shipowick

At the heart of Putin’s Assassin is Matt Kozar, a compelling and fearless protagonist whose journey feels especially timely in today’s volatile political landscape. Readers may remember Matt from Victor Malarek’s earlier novel Wheat Shaft, where he exposed a shadowy network profiting from food aid corruption  an investigation that nearly cost him his life. After surviving a near-fatal shooting, Matt returns to the New York Tribune a year later, hungry for his next big story to unravel.

Though Putin’s Assassin is fiction, its themes and scenarios echo real-world events with chilling authenticity. Matt’s latest assignment begins when he overhears a reporter discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine — a moment that reawakens a dormant part of his identity.

As a fourth-generation Ukrainian Canadian, Matt had never strongly identified with his roots. ‘Ukrainianism,’ as he viewed it, belonged to older generations. But the brutal attack on Ukraine stirs something deeper. When he hears an impassioned speech by U.S. Senator William Bradford denouncing Vladimir Putin’s regime, Kozar feels compelled to act. Defying his editor, he travels to Ukraine to witness the reality on the ground.

In Bucha, Matt sees firsthand the unspeakable atrocities committed by Russian forces. These experiences don’t just fuel his outrage; they awaken a profound sense of responsibility, transforming his professional mission into a personal crusade. His heritage, once abstract, becomes a source of clarity and strength. Through his reporting, he exposes these crimes to the world, his articles splashed across the front page of the Tribune.

Upon returning to New York, Kozar is shocked to learn that Senator Bradford has been arrested and charged with the murder of his intern. The senator’s outlandish claim — that he’s been framed by the Kremlin — seems implausible at first. But for Matt, who has just come from the chaos of war, the idea isn’t far-fetched. As he begins to investigate, with the help of his forensics-expert girlfriend Mei, what emerges is a dangerous web of political manipulation, misinformation, and international conspiracy.  The investigation is no longer just professional; it becomes deeply personal as he is driven by his fearlessness and determination to expose the truth.

Matt is a character the reader can root for; a fictional voice rooted in truth. He reflects the core mission behind Malarek’s writing — to hold the powerful to account and give voice to those who have none. Victor Malarek uses Matt Kozar not only to tell a gripping story, but also to illuminate injustices that many would otherwise never know about, presenting complex issues in a compelling and accessible way.  Through this fast-paced political thriller, Malarek explores how those in power manipulate truth and silence dissent. Putin’s Assassin reveals the human cost of unchecked authority and the courage it takes to challenge it.

A note about the author…

Victor Malarek is a veteran journalist with a career spanning over four decades. He’s known for his hard-hitting investigative work, including his time as a reporter for The Globe and Mail where he received an unprecedented three Michener Awards for commendable public service journalism. He later joined CBC as a co-host of the Fifth Estate, earning a Gemini Award in 1997 as Canada’s top broadcast journalist, and a fourth Michener Award in 2000. A decade later, he joined CTV’s W5 as its senior investigative reporter where his documentaries won four Canadian Screen Awards. In his 27 years in television, he has worked on more than 325 investigative documentaries and even inspired two films based on his life and investigative reporting. He retired in 2017 though retirement seems to be a very loose term as he has written six books during this time.