Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

“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 work of literary fiction and an 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 as unlikely allies 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.

This captivating Ukrainian fiction blends 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 in this satirical novel set twenty years after Soviet rule.

Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley