Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, this novel is a Murakami-esque ode to the revered cultural capital of western Ukraine, filled with a charming cast of eccentrics who together make up the beating heart of the city.

Strange, almost magical, things are afoot in Lviv. Seagulls circle overhead while the passing breeze carries a briny whiff, even though the coast is far away. A ragtag group of aging hippies gather around a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery. Among them are an ex-KGB officer and the old subversive he once spied upon. Soon, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych band together to uncover the source of the city's "anomalies."

Meanwhile, across Lviv, Taras, a cab driver, ferries kidney-stone patients over cobblestone streets in his ancient Opel Vectra. He's wooing Darka, a woman who works nights at a currency exchange. The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on the two lonely old men, relics of a bygone era, who will stop at nothing to save their city.

Blending Shakespearean comedy with Andrey Kurkov's unique brand of black humor and vodka-fueled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is a postcard from a more optimistic era. Populated by a delightful cast of oddballs, Kurkov's novel is an affectionate snapshot of a country finding itself and reclaiming its lost dreams twenty years after Soviet rule.

Translated from the Russian by Reuben Woolley.