Synopses & Reviews
Every day, the Birdman performs the same ritual: he climbs out onto his window ledge to see if he can manage to kill himself--and never does. The Birdman is a member of a loose-knit group of failed suicides, each pursuing absurd ways to end their lives: one saving up lost-dog reward money to buy enough good whiskey to drink himself to death, another hoping to contract a fatal disease by sleeping with as many women as possible. When it seems these routines will continue indefinitely, the Birdman meets a "professional" suicide: the dangerous and inscrutable "man with orange suspenders," who makes a living by trying to hang himself whenever he sees a potential rescuer approaching. This chance encounter, which leads at last to a real death, will force the Birdman to confront the roots of his desire to escape from life, and to see first-hand that dying is more than just a rehearsal.
Review
"There is much laughter in Teodorovici's novel, the uproarious laughter of characters faced with a ridiculous world, the healthy laughter of the reader, black humor, the absurd, self‑irony, linguistic humor, and situational comedy. But behind the scenes there is also enormous sadness. The sadness of the clown (the reader‑clown, the character‑clown), who is all the sadder the more acutely he understands his condition as a man who, after having failed at life, cannot help but fail at death. (Sanda Tivadar, Familia)"
Synopsis
The Birdman, narrator of Our Circus Presents, lives in a one-room apartment on the fifth floor of a squalid tenement block in northern Romania...
About the Author
Lucian Dan Teodorovici is the senior editor of Suplimentul de cultură, one of the most prominent weekly cultural magazines in Romania. He has contributed prose, drama, and nonfiction to magazines in Romania and abroad, and has written numerous screenplays, including one for a feature-length adaptation of Our Circus Presents.Alistair Ian Blyth's translations from Romanian include the novel Little Fingers by Filip Florian and An Intellectual History of Cannibalism by Cătălin Avramescu.