Translated by Boris Dralyuk
HarperVia
Published May 13, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Samson Kolechko has fallen into a job as an investigator in Bolshevik Kyiv during the unsettled time after World War I. A Chekist (a member of a brutal secret police organization) has enlisted him and his colleague Kholodny, a former priest, to investigate an apparent homicide. Someone has reported blood seeping under the door of a shed. It turns out to be pig’s blood – but though it isn’t a homicide, Samson and Kholodny must investigate the illegal slaughter and sale of meat in violation of a new law that says all meat must go to the newly established ExProFooCom, the Extraordinary Provincial Food Committee, which Samson had never heard of. They arrest Citizen Briskin, who sold the pig that was slaughtered, and must find and interview everyone who bought meat from him.
This not-a-homicide investigation is the central mystery of the story, though it’s something of a MacGuffin. Samson repeatedly interviews Briskin, coaxing names of buyers out of him while reluctantly taking up smoking, having been told it’s important to blow smoke in suspects’ faces when interrogating them. He and Kholodny try to negotiate the new rules and decrees while skirting around the inherent violence used to enforce them. Meanwhile he and his colleague debate whether Judas was the first revolutionary, and whether he deserves the monument Trotsky wants erect in his name.
There are other episodic events. A crash between a cart and a tram leads to multiple deaths. Samson’s feelings for the woman with whom he shares his apartment are growing warmer, and when she disappears while trying to carry out her orders to gather railway statistics, he’s frantic and sets out to rescue her. She’s being held by militantly independent rail workers who violently reject the authority of the Soviets – or anyone else – devoted only to keeping the rail lines open as warring factions crisscross Ukraine, vying for power. Then there are the petty thefts occurring in the office that he must solve.
Kurkov’s true subject is what it was like to live through a destabilized period in Ukraine’s history when the national identity was up for grabs and the Soviet state was finding its feet, with conflicting forces, absurd new regulations, and fleeting moments of sweetness mingled together. This is the second in a planned trilogy (after 2024’s The Silver Bone) written by an author who is considered a major literary figure in Ukraine, who finished this novel and stopped writing fiction during the Russian invasion in favor of journalism. The literal translation of the original is The Heart is Not Meat – an assertion made by a character who bought the slaughtered pig’s heart but denies it was illegal, because it’s not actually meat.
It’s a claim that resonates with the overall tone of the story in which small pleasures and kindnesses persist in a time of chaos. Samson tries to follow orders obediently without losing his basic morality in a system that is brutal, illogical, and capricious. Mixed into the violence of the era, Kurkov maintains a tone of humorous absurdity; faced with extraordinary challenges, most people we encounter are just trying to live their lives. Given the current state of play, as a tyrant tries to reestablish the Soviet empire with brutality, it’s a gentle testament to the resilience of the Ukrainian people by an author with a lot of heart.