Synopses & Reviews
Entering a weird, remote hamlet, Andrei calls himself “a simple wayfarer,” but he is in fact highly compromised: he has no identity papers. Taken under the wing of the military zone’s commander, Andrei is first assigned to guard the blueberries that supply a nearby bear reserve. He is surrounded by human wrecks, supernatural umbrellas, birds carrying plagues, albino twins.
The bears — and an affair with a married woman — occupy Andrei until his protector is replaced by a new female commander, “a slender creature, quiet,diaphanous, like a dragonfly,” and yet an iron-fisted harridan. As things grow ever more alarming, Andrei becomes a “corpse watchman,” standing guard over the dead to check for any signs of life, and then …
Review
"If there's a magic realism Eastern-bloc style, is surely its paradigm." Alison McCulloch
Review
"A fascinating novel that links intense realism with a boundless imagination, as if it could have written by Gabriel García Márquez." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"The Sinistra Zone begins
Review
"It is hard to find in contemporary European literature a satire more dark and brutal and yet at the same time, more lyrical than this book." Péter Esterházy
Review
" is a small masterpiece of stunning beauty that begs to be savored slowly." El País
Review
"The Sinistra Zone is a small masterpiece of stunning beauty that begs to be savored slowly." La Vanguardia
Review
"The Sinistra Zone begins
Review
"The Sinistra Zone begins
Review
" begins a la Chandler. But that's not how it continues. Like all good things, it embodies a wealth of possibilities: it can be read as a sociological intelligence briefing; a political/cultural situation report; a supplication; a finely wrought, postmodern feat of literary virtuosity; a chronicle of a bygone world, and so on. Again and again I was amazed by the fullness of the words, by the compact and luminous text -- by the rich and powerful fabric that Ádám Bodor has woven into these pages." Die Zeit
Synopsis
Lyrical, surreal, and yet unsettlingly realistic, swims in the totalitarian backwaters of Eastern Europe
About the Author
The author of ten volumes of fiction since 1969, Ádám Bodor is an award-winning, Transylvanian-born Hungarian writer.Paul Olcháry has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and Hungary's Milán Füst Foundation.