Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received "hundreds of rejections" and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev was followed by the novels The Bickford Fuse, Grey Bees, and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv (longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023), as well as his non-fiction work Diary of an Invasion (2022).

The Lost Soldiers is not a conventional crime novel. Magic realist elements are introduced as Samson sews his ear, severed in an earlier adventure, into a suspect's greatcoat, enabling him to listen in on conversations when he is not present. Eccentric characters fill its pages. However, it is a very engaging work of fiction, told with wit and imagination by a man often described as Ukraine's greatest living writer.

Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received "hundreds of rejections" and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than 75,000 copies of his books in a single year. His novel Death and the Penguin became an international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages. As well as writing fiction for adults and children, he has become known as a commentator and journalist on Ukraine for the international media. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev was followed by the novels The Bickford Fuse, Grey Bees, and Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv (longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023), as well as his non-fiction work Diary of an Invasion (2022).

The Lost Soldiers is not a conventional crime novel. Magic realist elements are introduced as Samson sews his ear, severed in an earlier adventure, into a suspect's greatcoat, enabling him to listen in on conversations when he is not present. Eccentric characters fill its pages. However, it is a very engaging work of fiction, told with wit and imagination by a man often described as Ukraine's greatest living writer.