The Milkman in the Night

Reviews / Votes

A glorious, epic, eccentric and often hilarious satire, heavily tinged with Russian melancholy -- Kate Saunders * The Times * There is much to enjoy in this book. Kurkov works in the tradition of Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov, blending folkloric characters, magical realism and political satire to reveal a society riddled with greed, stupidity and corruption -- Marina Lewycka * Financial Times * Good-hearted and brutal at the same time, The Milkman in the Night is a complex, unsettling mixture of bleakness and warmth * Sunday Times * Kurkov is hugely talented * Time Out * This book is a joyride... Kurkov has a rollercoaster of fun between zig and zag. He defies the reader not to join him * Scotsman * Set in post-Orange Revolution Kiev, Kurkov's narrative is a meditation on the uneasy dreams of a troubled cultural psyche * Times Literary Supplement * Blackly surreal... Kurkov has an artisan's eye for quirky detail but dispatches it with terse Eastern pessimism. Here, he weaves a low-key epic in which a series of characters - a single mother, a sniffer-dog handler, a security guard, a politician, a man having an affair in his sleep, a widow, two cats and a plastinated corpse - become embroiled in a bizarre conspiracy involving a drug that sharpens people's sense of justice and a very dodgy milking operation. It sounds fanciful but Kurkov never gets too caught up in this world, describing it with a pragmatic economy and powerful clarity -- Andrzej Lukowski * Metro * Kurkov's imagination kicks into high gear and turns Kiev into an absurdist playground. The result is a whimsical, skewed vision which can be, by turns, delightful and discomforting * Herald * Kurkov entices us along all the fault-lines of his bizarre world, where a young man sleepwalks through a double life and a widow notices her embalmed husband has fresh dirt on his unworn shoes -- Jane Jakeman * Independent * Drugs, milk and a brace of cats pop up in a murky epic from Ukraine's master of the surreal conspiracy thriller * Metro *