The Stolen Heart

The Kyiv Mysteries

By: Andrey Kurkov, Boris Dralyuk - translator

Narrated by: Matthew Spencer

Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime.

But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best.

Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it's no wonder the "meat case" takes a back seat.

But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson's fate lies - and Nadezhda's too, for the two are inextricably entwined.

Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

Reviews for The Silver Bone - Longlisted for the International Booker Prize

"Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine's greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre" New York Times

"Wildly enjoyable . . . A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux . . . I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more" Guardian

©2025 Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich

Critic reviews

A new novel by Andrey Kurkov confirms him as the unofficial spokesperson for Ukraine's irrepressible spirit of improvisational anarchy.

Andrey Kurkov, widely regarded as one of Ukraine's greatest writers, continues to showcase his profound and humorous storytelling in The Stolen Heart . . . This is a must read for fans of historical mysteries and those interested in the complexities of Ukraine's turbulent history, and also for the general reader and those who have yet to encounter the impressive Ukrainian's vast oeuvre.

The novel's surreal, black humour is an ideal lens through which to view the absurdities of living in a Bolshevik paradise in which Leon Trotsky wants to erect a giant statue of Judas Iscariot and police officers enforce barmy laws that change overnight.

Kurkov writes with humour and compassion.