English translation of Andrei Kurkov's novel has been categorized as classic

The writer reported this on Facebook.

The novel by Ukrainian writer and PEN Ukraine President Andrei Kurkov, first published in English translation in 2001 by Vintage Books, Penguin, has become a classic.

"After almost 25 years of continuous presence on the English-language book market, the novel Death and the Penguin is moving to another rank and now it will have a further life in the Classics series of Vintage Books, Penguin," Kurkov said.

The novel is set in the 1990s in post-Soviet Kyiv. In the story, journalist Viktor Zolotarev, dreaming of becoming a successful writer and writing novels, finds a job at a local newspaper where he writes obituaries about people who are still alive. The hero has a depressed royal penguin at home, Misha, whom the journalist is going to send to Antarctica at some point. However, when Zolotarev reads his own obituary, he decides that he will fly to Antarctica instead of the penguin.

The novel became Kurkov's most famous work and has been translated into more than 30 languages. The novel was first published in Ukrainian under the title The Death of a Stranger in 2000, translated by Les Herasymchuk. In 2017, Folio Publishing House reissued the translation under the title Picnic on Ice.