Synopses & Reviews
This fascinating novel presents the dying thoughts of Nikola Petkov, the last significant opposition leader to defy the Communist takeover of Bulgaria, before he was hung in 1947.
Review
"Why a young American writer in the 1980s chose to imagine seriously the end of a Bulgarian revolutionary is cause for wonder in itself. That he also seriously employs new narrative techniques to do so is doubly impressive. One comes away from this little book with a bitter taste at the back of the throat, a taste that may very well be that of recent Eastern European history." --Andrei Codrescu,
New York Times Book ReviewReview
"[A] thoroughly informed and deeply disturbing meditation on the ultimate futility of overdetermined conviction, of ideological commitment, of absolute politics itself." --James McCourt
Review
"Everyone knows that dead men tell no tales. But this book offers a suggestion that maybe it's a shame they don't. Here's a fine effort to capture disappearing history—history that vanishes by being forgotten. And here's a sharp reminder that all countries are potentially obscure, and all people potentially unknown."
—Madison Smartt Bell
About the Author
Thomas McGonigle was born in 1944 in Brooklyn. The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov was his first novel and the first novel by an American to be set in Bulgaria. He is the author of Going to Patchogue and In Patchogue. He lives in New York City.