Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov: Vodka-soaked tale fails to capture the spirit of Lviv

Andrey Kurkov may be the best-known Ukrainian writer in the West but this novel is a miss

Lost genius: Jimi Hendrix is a mysterious absence in Kurkov’s novel. Photo by David Redfern/Redferns

Ksenia Samotiy

What would you get if the Lord Mayor of Dublin asked a well-known writer from somewhere entirely different to write a story about people stumbling drunkenly around the city’s streets for no apparent reason? It might end up looking something like Andrey Kurkov’s newly published, but actually decade-old, novel.