Grey Bees

To call this book a slow burn would be an understatement. I'd seen this guy compared to pretty much every author out there from Murakami to Kafka; surprisingly enough, I'd never seen anyone compare Kurkov to Rushdie, which is strange because Kurkov's writing style very much feels like if Rushdie had the attention span to remember to punctuate his sentences. Point being, though, these comparisons didn't really click with me ‘till I was about halfway through the book. The color grey (and also bees for that matter) acts as recurring symbolism, but very fitting symbolism given the book's writing style. It's a mixture of a war going on and a hellish, bleak portrayal of the Russian government (the black), and also just this guy living his everyday life tending to his bees, going from place to place (white). Pretty good book, even if I wish I read Death and the Penguin first.