Ingram
Все книги издательства IngramHomunculus
Homunculus is billed as a collection of sixteen 'fairy tales for adults' with something for every reader. The author has largely retained the classical fairytale structure with its elements of surprise and the constant intertwining of the real and unreal, but he transcends the sugarsweet endings we are familiar with. Along with typical fairytale features like the interplay of humans and animals, he presents us with a wide range of more mature themes the erotic, the tragic, the absurd set amidst dichotomies on an adult wavelength: mythical vs. urban, banality vs. wisdom, as well as issues of guilt and longing. Some of the stories are related to existing internationally known fairy tales such as 'Tom Thumb', where the main character struggles with an oedipal bond with his mother, or 'The Huntsman', told from the perspective of the hunter sent out to kill Snow White. Others go back to Macedonian folk roots or have been freely composed by Prokopiev himself, but all of them are rendered with humour, skill and a noticeable love of life!
Exile
Winner of the European Prize for Literature, 2011. Exile is a collection of short stories with the tast of a novel. The overriding theme is the sense of melancholy of those who have been alienated from their homeland, from their families or from society. By offering the reader short, vivid glimpses into other worlds; be they of real or fictional characters, Ilhan builds a patchwork of stories which highlight the lives of the dispossessed. As a woman writing in modern day Turkey, she is not afraid to take on the themes of honour killings or the American occupation of Iraq. All stories are open to her empathy and understanding.
Sun Alley
Sal, the protagonist of 'Sun Alley', is an exceptionally intelligent twelveyearold boy, experiencing his first love. One summer afternoon, on his way to see his girlfriend Emi, he is caught in a rain shower and shelters in the hallway of a block of flats. Led by a strong odour, he goes down into the basement, where he comes upon the corpse of a young and very beautiful woman. Little by little, Sal will attempt to discover the mystery of this body and, at the same time, will pursue in his amorous relationship with Emi; a strange liaison which unfolds in parallel with the adulterous affair of an adult couple whose path Sal repeatedly crosses. As his love story with Emi evolves, Sal tries his best to hide it, not only from the cynical eyes of his friends in the neighbourhood, but also from his parents whose intervention might well shatter his bliss thereby developing a veritably adulterous mindset that can also be observed in the adult couple. The connections between adults and the two children, on the one hand, and the dead body discovered by Sal on the other, are far deeper and more complicated than they may at first seem. Sun Alley is a novel about the roots of adultery and the destiny of an exceptional young boy who, thanks to his gifts, has the power to see his own future in his mind s eye.
The Son
'The Son' follows one night in the life of a hero with no name, a writer whose life is falling apart. That afternoon, his wife left him, while for many years he has been in conflict with his father, who blames him for his mother s death. Incapable of finding inner calm, he leaves into the warm, Mediterranean night, in the city of Ulcinj, itself a multilayered mixture of European dimensions, African influences, and the communist past. The hero of The Son is a man who can t adapt to new times and rules. On his journey into the night, he meets an assortment of characters: a piano student from Vienna who has abandoned his musical career and converted to Islam, a radical Christian preacher and a group of refugees from Kosovo. In the style of Mihail Bulgakov, the characters meet in the old city of Ulcinj, at the Square of the Slaves a location where the pirates who lived in the city until the 19th century would bring and sell captured slaves, including Miguel de Cervantes, according to legend.
Hansen's Children
Appalling and tragic, Ognjen Spahic's exceptional short novel animates the misery of Ceasescu's Romania and its inglorious fall with a metaphor fully up to the task: leprosy. Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen was a Norwegian scientist who isolated the Mycobacterium leprae in 1873 and his 'children' are the tragic sufferers of this ghastly disease. In Spahic's novel, it's 1989 and a dozen of them are confined to the last leper house in Europe, an underequipped facility located in a miserable corner of South Eastern Romania overlooking a toxic fertilizer factory. Here our nameless narrator shares a room with fellowsufferer Robert W. Duncan, an American intelligence officer whose career was ruined after he was captured by Communists in Berlin. But Duncan still has a few contacts in the shadowlands, notably 'Mr Smooth' who has it in his power to liberate the two men by supplying passports and helping them out of the country. Blending Romania's turbulent 1989 revolution with a lyrical fiction that both shocks and enthrals, Montenegrin author Ognjen Spahic offers an allegorical page to Southeastern Europe's intriguing scrapbook. In 'Hansen's Children', the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu's repressive control is witnessed from behind the walls of Europe's sole lepercolony. Powerless against forces beyond the leprosarium, the rebellious political change seen across the country influences and erodes the camp's brittle harmony.
Death in the Museum of Modern Art
A tender and revealing set of stories by the uniquely delicate Bosnian writer, Alma Lazarevska. Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, Lazarevska reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers and the bombs that we know are out there and that occasionally impinge on the story in shocking ways. One of the finest works to have emerged from the tragedy that was the siege of Sarajevo. The Award for «Best Book of 1996» from the Society of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina • Translated by the awardwinning Celia Hawkesworth (shortlisted for the OxfordWeidenfeld Prize & winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation, for Dubravka Ugrešić's 'The Culture of Lies')
Fairground Magician
A witty, wonderful collection of short stories with a distinctly feminine, erotic flavour. With a selection of wonderful characters; from Elvis impersonators to cat lovers, Lengold takes the reader on a charming ride in this prizewinning collection.
The Aziz Bey Incident
Here is the life of an ordinary Turkish man, a master tambour player of local fame, whose life stretches from Istanbul to Beirut because of his obsessive love for Maryam. We witness the fading of this love with the passage of time and changing of circumstances, bringing us closer to this man than to many other modern protagonists.
Ekaterini
The story of Ekaterini is the story of one woman who lives through the twentieth century in a part of the world where a long life could bear witness to four major wars. This is history seen from the woman's point of view, the story of the ordinary lives of the women who live through the turbulent historical events of their time.
Mission London
The new Bulgarian ambassador to London is determined to satisfy the whims of his bosses at all costs. Putting himself at the mercy of a shady PRagency, he is promised direct access to the very highest social circles. Meanwhile, on the lower levels of the embassy, things are not as they should be. With criminal gangs operating in the kitchens, police on the trail of missing ducks from Hyde Park and a sexy Princess Diana impersonator employed as the cleaner, how is an ambassador supposed to do his job? Combining the themes of corruption, confusion and outright incompetence, Popov masterfully brings together the multiple plot lines in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, allowing the illusions and delusions of the postcommunist society to be reflected in their glorious absurdity!