Through two novels that speak to the public, the writer Andrej Kurkov seeks to awaken society not only from the nostalgia for totalitarianism but also from the times of the mafia, corruption and the lack of social structures.
How to explain the presence of seagulls and the smell of the sea in a city without a coast? The Ukrainian writer, Andrej Kurkov, connects these elements with people's relationship with freedom, the countries they love.
While he was in Tirana to promote the novel “Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv”, he explained why, as a writer, he uses black humor and the absurd to show life.
“Thanks to my brother who was a Soviet dissident, I learned a lot of jokes about Brezhnev and Stalin. I realized that humor is a good way to fight and, moreover, a sense of humor is optimism. All my works have black humor, surrealism and happy endings,” he said.
In his works such as “Death and the Penguin”, he uses literature as a tool to show corruption to society
“Literature is a provocation for readers, forcing them to think about what they read. “Death and the Penguin” shows life after the fall of the Soviet Union, in the time of the mafia and corruption, in the time of the lack of social structures and is a novel about loneliness, the search for love, as an escape to a better future. Viktor, the character of the work, adopts a penguin in the zoo and creates an artificial family to fight difficult times”, says Kurkov.
He connects the nostalgia of societies that have lived under totalitarianism with the political manipulations of those who seek to re-propose total control of society, while his literature is an antidote to the overlapping of perceptions.
