I blame my obsession with literary animals on Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov. Misha, the most memorable character of his thriller Death and the Penguin, left web-footed prints all over my imagination. The creature lives with a young writer called Viktor, after the zoo gave away "hungry animals" to "anyone who was able to feed them."

Lonely Viktor crafts obituaries for a newspaper in readiness for his subjects' eventual demise, only to find them suddenly dying in mysterious

—Julia Stuart