The Silver Bone

Ukrainian author Kurkov’s (Grey Bees) new novel, set in 1919 Kyiv, mixes elements of grim humor and surrealism. It’s a far-from-straightforward policier, as though Gogol, Bulgakov, Ilf, and Petrov had been thrown into the mix. In the novel’s first sentence, Samson hears a Cossack saber hit his father’s head, splitting it in half. Then a saber slices off one of Samson’s ears. Here reality fragments. The ear still hears and transmits what it hears to Samson, as the two Red Army soldiers who have commandeered his flat plan his death. (With Samson dead, they can desert the army.) When Samson tries to report them, he’s conscripted into the Kyiv police force to investigate a murder involving a stolen bolt of fine cloth that the tailor from whom it was stolen refuses to take back. Then Samson’s partner is killed and he vows vengeance. Along the way, he meets a stolid Soviet damsel; love ensues, sweetly and modestly. Eventually he finds the killer, identified by the pattern of the cloth laid out by the tailor—bulky top, spindly legs. One will never feel uncomfortable en route through this admittedly complicated story whose Kyiv is a complicated place to survive.