Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: A Novel

by Andrey Kurkov

Overview

“A bittersweet relic of a sunnier age . . . . A joyous caper . . . playful and ebullient, shot through with magical twists and supernatural turns.”—Observer

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, a Murakami-esque ode to the revered cultural capital of western Ukraine, filled with a charming cast of eccentrics who together make up the beating heart of the city.

Strange, almost magical, things are afoot in Lviv. Seagulls circle overhead while the passing breeze carries a briny whiff, even though the coast is far away. A ragtag group of aging hippies gather around a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery. Among them are an ex-KGB officer and the old subversive he once spied upon. Soon, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych band together to uncover the source of the city's “anomalies.”

Meanwhile, across Lviv, Taras, a cab driver, ferries kidney-stone patients over cobblestone streets in his ancient Opel Vectra. He’s wooing Darka, a woman who works nights at a currency exchange. The young lovers don’t know it, but their fate depends on the two lonely old men, relics of a bygone era, who will stop at nothing to save their city.

Blending Shakespearean comedy with Andrey Kurkov's unique brand of black humor and vodka-fueled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, is a postcard from a more optimistic era. Populated by a delightful cast of oddballs, Kurkov's novel is an affectionate snapshot of a country finding itself and reclaiming its lost dreams twenty years after Soviet rule.

Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063354555
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ukraine's most celebrated novelist, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay writer before becoming a novelist. His books include the 2024 International Booker Prize-longlisted The Silver Bone, the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Grey Bees, and the international bestseller Death and the Penguin. He is also a commentator and journalist reporting on Ukraine for the international media. He lives with his family in Kyiv.

Editorial Reviews

"A bittersweet relic of a sunnier age ... [Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is] playful and ebullient, shot through with magical twists and supernatural turns... [a] joyous caper." — The Observer

"Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv brims with the bittersweet charm and rueful satire of the books . . . that established Kurkov's international reputation." — Financial Times

"Charming. . . . A love letter to Lviv, Ukraine's linguistic and cultural capital." — The Guardian

The escapades of Andrey Kurkov’s loveable eccentrics provide a frame for an intriguing portrait of Lviv in the 2000s, a melancholy borderland city that finds itself recalling a troubled past as it sits on the cusp of an uncertain future. — Jury of The International Booker Prize

From the Publisher

★ 2024-06-15
A Ukrainian city finds itself under siege from a series of threats straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie or an episode ofScooby-Doo, Where Are You!“You know…some cities only exist so people can dream about going there,” one character tells another in Kurkov’s novel, originally published in Ukraine in 2012. “And sometimes the dreaming is more important than the going.” Now in English, his story paints a dreamlike portrait of Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, and a strange mystery that dares to be solved. Chief among the sleuths are Taras, a young man who drives patients with kidney stones on cobblestone streets to shake them out; Alik, an old hippie who joins his long-haired brethren every September in Lychakiv Cemetery to memorialize Jimi Hendrix (whose right hand is rumored to be buried there); and Captain Ryabtsev, a former KGB officer who once spied on Alik and wants to be his friend. Such eccentric characters are a Kurkov staple, and so is the surreal situation confronting them: Rumors abound that a prehistoric sea may be rising under Lviv, which would explain a spate of violent seagull attacks and a strong smell of iodine that won’t go away. The search for an explanation forms the backdrop to Taras’ tender romance with Darka, a currency exchange clerk who’s allergic to handling money. Captain Ryabtsev goes on a similar search, and Kurkov’s characterization of the captain, who lost his sense of purpose when the Soviet Union collapsed, strikes a sad note in an otherwise lighthearted tale. Though the novel isn’t overtly political, Ryabtsev’s crisis of identity echoes Ukraine’s more than 20 years into its independence. And when Taras gets home after a kidney stone session and hears the national anthem on the radio—“The glory and freedom of our Ukraine has not yet perished”—reading those words now is much more poignant than it was when Kurkov first wrote them.

Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe.

Kirkus Reviews