My favourite literary penguin has a prototype called Hedwig

Yesterday Simon and I had a chance to meet another of our favourite writers, a Russian who became one of the most well known Ukrainian writers - Andrey Kurkov. I have read his story about penguin Mischa and then joyfully distributed it amongst our friends here who immediately became hooked. They must have thought that the story of a depressed penguin is a pure invention by its author.

Yesterday I managed to grab the microphone during the meeting with the charming author and ask the question myself: was one of my favourite animal characters of Russian language literature (second one being Behemot) a real one or Mr Kurkov made it all up?

Well, he sort of made the penguin bit up (though it sounded awfully real to me for a story set up in Ukraine in the beginning of the 90s. You see, I still remember the 90s in Poland, a time which they never had that intensively here) but then when the book became popular in Germany too, Bild asked him if he would adopt a blind girl -penguin called Hedwig from a Hamburg Zoo. All her mates were wiped out because of some virus which struck the Zoo penguins and she was the only one who suvived the epidemic, though left complitely blind. To cheer her up, she was put into the same enclosure as pelicans and in addition adopted by one of the most charming Ukrainian writers.

And Mr Kurkov is indeed charming. He told the audience his incredible life story (Scottish audience did not seem to believe him, again. To me, again, it all sounded extremely plausible.), answered some questions (pity that some people asking the questions did not do their research properly before grabbing the microphone) with his characteristic nice giggle - in other words a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, just like his characters. There was no acting, no pretending to be smarter than others, no doing what Simon and I call 'pulling a NY art scene'. WYSIWYG.

It also turned out that he wrote a review of the cliche-ridden Marina Lewycka book about Ukrainians in UK (which became a best seller here - something that I would put down to a great marketing, a great title and a great bookcover design). I have read the book a couple of years ago and when I finished it I was just plain angry - this woman fed her readers on pure stereotypes and now it turned out that she was technically not even a Ukrainian! And everybody in UK were praising the book which flew off the shelves. I was affraid that maybe there was something wrong with me since I did not enjoy the story AT ALL. Seldom anything I read makes me annoyed but this book did exactly that. Now, after reading his review, I feel much better...

I also feel much better since Simon and I got a very nice dedication to one of our well fingered copies of Kurkov's novel:'To Sylwia and Simon with the very best wishes from Ukraine. A. Kurkov'