Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay writer before becoming a novelist. Death and the Penguin , his first novel to appear in English, was an international bestseller and has been translated into more than thirty languages. In addition to his fiction for adults and children, he has become a commentator and journalist reporting on Ukraine for the international media. He lives in Kiev with his British wife and their three children.