The Silver Bone
by Andrey Kurkov
Longlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize
The Silver Bone is by Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine’s best-known writers. It’s a historical novel set in Kyiv in 1919, and (apparently) the first in a series of detective novels. This was a period of fighting between various factions—and is also the setting for The White Guard (1915) by Mikhail Bulgakov. Kurkov apparently took inspiration “from the real-life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv”–though there’s also comedy and magical realism.
