Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it''s hard to understand why selling the meat of one''s own pig constitutes a crime.
But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best.
Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she''s carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it''s no wonder the "meat case" takes a back seat.
But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson''s fate lies - and Nadezhda''s too, for the two are inextricably entwined.
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Reviews for The Silver Bone - Longlisted for the International Booker Prize
"Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine''s greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre" New York Times
"Wildly enjoyable . . . A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux . . . I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more" Guardian
