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  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099455257
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $28.99

The Case Of The General's Thumb



An international thriller, shot through with black satire and authentic detail, by the author of the highly acclaimed Death & the Penguin.

When the corpse of a distinguished general and presidential adviser is found, attached to an advertising balloon, lieutenant Viktor Slutsky is sent in to investigate. Meanwhile, KGB officer Nik Tsensky arrives in Kiev for a secret mission.

A larger-than-life hitman, bombs under furniture, a hearse, a deaf-and-dumb blonde, a tortoise and a parrot all play a part as Kurkov evokes a world of secret militia not seen before in Western fiction.

  • Published: 3 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099455257
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $28.99

About the author

Andrey Kurkov

Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world’s media, notably in the UK, France, Germany and the States.

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Praise for The Case Of The General's Thumb

An ebullient black comedy... Reminiscent of the best Soviet dissident literature

Daily Telegraph

Kurkov received universal praise for his debut novel Death and the Penguin... Kurkov's latest is better

Time Out

Full of touches of grim insight and tactful surrealism, with just enough of the absurd to suggest a cross between John le Carre's Smiley and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

John Burnside, Scotland on Sunday

Kurkov is a fine satirist and a real, blackly comic find

Observer

Kurkov flips from mock-tragedy to comedy and back again, planting the ominous and the absurd neatly among deadpan descriptions of a daily life in denial

The Times