Death And The Penguin - Tapa blanda

"Kurkov demonstrates, that nowadays one is allowed to tell fresh new stories in Russia again: intelligent and funny." -Thomas Grob, "Neue Zurcher Zeitung

Victor is depressed: his lover has dumped him, his short stories are too short, and the light has gone off in his dingy apartment. His only companion is Misha, the penguin he rescued from Kiev's zoo, when it couldn't feed the animals anymore. Misha is the silent witness to Victor's despair. Misha joins in his celebration -- fish and vodka -- when Victor's luck seems to turn: he is commissioned to write obituaries under the pen name "A Group of Friends". The weird thing is that the editor wants him to select subjects who are still alive, the movers and shakers of the new, post-Communist society. Pleased with Victor's work, the editor sends him his friend, also named Misha (from then onward known as Misha-non-penguin), who commissions Victor to write an obituary about one of his shady associates. After a job well done, Misha-non-penguin and Victor get drunk on vodka and Victor confesses that he is frustrated as an obituary writer: his subjects refuse to die. The next morning his most prominent one, a corrupt politician with Mafia ties and a mistress, is dead. The tide has turned.