A boxer-turned-hitman faces an impossible mission to kill his brother; an old lady sets up a gang of her own teenage vigilantes after being mugged; a retired geography teacher dreams of places he's never been; a clown on the make talks an impoverished lion tamer into selling his lion to gangsters; and a fading beauty is courted by a suitor with suspiciously scaly hands... Drawing on the monsters and myths of Balkan folklore, the brutal reality of the Communist regime and the dazzling magic of Enev's own imagination, these stories have a surreal and almost hypnotic quality. Absurd, both painfully funny and deeply sad, Circus Bulgaria reaches straight into the cracked heart of Eastern Europe.
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781846272400
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 274 g
Dimensions: 197 x 132 x 20 mm
An important and also an exciting work. Sometimes searing, sometimes funny, often both, it opens a window onto one of Europe's most interesting literary landscapes. Kassabova's translation is superbly natural. This book is a rare achievement on every level - Elizabeth Kostova
Enev's prose poems of survival are powerful songs from the streets - like Balkan blues, they are deeply touching and heartbreaking - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Circus Bulgaria is rich and odd and unsettling but ultimately humane. I love it! - Gina Ochsner
The stories in Circus Bulgaria bristle with life's illogic. Wild, lawless and sad-funny, they provide a continuous discourse on the amorality and unknowability of life ... Anyone who has travelled in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union in the past twenty years will recognize the extremity, surrealism and unpredictability that these stories describe ... Enev is an exhilarating and unusual storyteller - Julian Evans, Times Literary Supplement
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