Please identify this writer
About two days ago, i.e. about 9:00pm on Fri Apr 8, I heard a program
on what I think is the BBC world service on an AM station (?WCBS) in
New York.
At any rate, on this program they were interviewing or had as a guest an older 
fiction writer who I believe was Ukrainian, although he definitely
wrote in Russian.  The work has apparently recently been translated
into English.
His novel was about a character in post soviet Ukraine,who is very
despondant about the moral corruption he sees about him, and who
therefore decides to commit suicide, by hiring a hit man.  Later he
changes his mind, and complications ensue.
My question is, who is this several times published writer, and what
is the name of this work.

I believe your author is Andrey (sometimes spelled Andrei) Kurkov,
whose "A Matter of Death and Life" concerns a depressed individual who
hires a hit man to kill him.

"An unexpected literary hit in 2002, Andrey Kurkov's Death and the
Penguin put Ukrainian fiction on the map...

A Matter of Death and Life was originally published in 1996, and it
has a neat conceit. Tolya surveys a grey life - neither work, love nor
the weather add much lustre. He and his unfaithful wife occupy a dank
matrimonial sulk in a one-room flat on the seventh floor. When Tolya
protests that he enjoys life, the best example he can give is
furtively eyeing up the tarts on Kreshchatick Street. In despair and a
grumpy attempt to make a posthumous mark, he hires a hit-man to bump
him off in a café on Fraternal Square."

Guardian Unlimited Books: Killing time in Kiev 
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,1445775,00.html

"A Matter of Death and Life, a novella set in Kurkov's usual
territory: the run-down cafés, icy streets and Khrushchev-era
apartment blocks of Kiev.

Tolya, the narrator, has fallen prey to existential misery, not helped
by the recent failure of his marriage. He's too passive and resigned
to commit suicide, but when an old schoolfriend says he can put him in
touch with a hitman who'll kill his wife's lover for a very reasonable
fee, he takes out a contract on himself instead."
  
Telegraph | Arts: A hitman cometh 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/03/06/bokur06.xml

According to this blog, Kurkov was interviewed recently on BBC radio:

"Monday, March 14, 2005
A Matter of Death and Life 
Ain't Radio 4 great? This morning (but you can listen to it all week)
the Start of the Week show has an interview with Audrey [sic] Kurkov,
author of Penguin Lost and Death and the Penguin. His new book, A
Matter of Death and Life, describes a man who hires a hitman to kill
himself but then changes his mind. It sounds like Kurkov's typically
bleak but humourous tale."

Ideas Asylum: Jamie's Weblog
http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2005/03/matter-of-death-and-life.php

The film "A Friend of the Deceased," with a script by Kurkov, has a similar plot:

"A Friend of the Deceased (Un Ami du Défunt), a Franco-Ukrainian film
directed by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich and written - in Russian - by
Andrei Kourkov, has a very attractive premise. Tolia (Alexandre
Lazarev), a translator living in Kiev and living a hand-to-mouth,
hustling sort of existence not untypical of life in the former Soviet
Union, finds that his rather glamorous wife (Angelika Nevolina), who
has begun to make much more money than he does, is having an affair
with a colleague at work. His drinking buddy, Dima (Eugen Pachin), who
has underworld connections, has a sentimental attachment to family
values and offers to procure a hit man to kill the lover. It seems
only a drunken gesture, but when the information about how to contact
the killer arrives, Tolia is so depressed that he substitutes his own
photograph for that of the proposed victim and writes on the back of
it where he will be - at the Café Art - at an appointed hour."

James Bowman: Movie Reviews
http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=579

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: kurkov hitman OR "hit man"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kurkov+hitman+OR+%22hit+man%22

I hope this helps. If this is not the correct author, or if anything
is unclear or incomplete, please request clarification; I'll be glad
to offer further assistance before you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Thank you very much.  This completely answers my question.

You can "listen again" to the BBC Radio 4 programme referred to in one
the links mentioned by Pinkfreud:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/rams/starttheweek_20050314.ram
(starting at about 30:30,0)


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek_20050314.shtml

... in one of the links ... (sorry).