Marjana Gaponenko Book order

96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savouring music in a gilded concert hall. Luka was born in 1914, the same year that Martha - the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons - died. Luka himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species...