A man and a woman, who have only known each other for a few hours and must soon part, sit in an airport cafe and invent an entire shared life together. A girl born with two different eyes - one seeing only the past and the other only the future - strives for the unattainable now. Late at night a father conspiratorially hangs laundry between two cherry trees in a tiny Bulgarian town in the 1970s and sets off a series of events that will turn absurdly historic. A woman on a train passing through the poppy-filled Central European countryside waves at everyone she passes, unaware that a single gesture can ripple through another''s life like fate. A lonely drifter on a snowy New Year''s Eve sees himself mirrored in a shop window TV, every move presumably watched by unseen millions and a world that had forgotten him. A celebrated connoisseur of sunsets returns to the town where his absurd, lucrative career had begun to witness the world''s very last dying of the light. From the International Booker Prize-winning Georgi Gospodinov, comes a collection of his finest short stories - each with one eye on the past, one on the future; an ear for the crucial detail that everyone else is missing; and the ability to reveal the ever-changing, ever-beautiful world as you have never seen it before. Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.

Autorentext
Georgi Gospodinov was born in Yambol, Bulgaria, in 1968. His works have been translated into 35 languages and shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes. He won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize and the 2021 Premio Strega Europe. His short stories have been translated into multiple languages, won the Zinklar Prize for Best Short Fiction, been nominated for the Angelus award for Central European Literature and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award. The story 'Blind Vashya' was adapted into an Oscar-nominated 2016 animated short film directed by Theodore Ushev. Gospodinov's novel Time Shelter, won the 2023 International Booker Prize.

Klappentext

'A WRITER OF GREAT WARMTH AS WELL AS SKILL' GUARDIAN

A man and a woman, who have only known each other for a few hours and must soon part, sit in an airport café and invent an entire shared life together.

A father, wearing only his underpants, hangs laundry between two cherry trees in a tiny Bulgarian town in the 1970s and sets off a series of events that will turn absurdly historic.

A woman on a train passing through the dandelion-filled central European countryside waves at everyone she passes, unaware that a single gesture can ripple through another's life like fate.

A lonely drifter on a snowy New Year's Eve sees himself mirrored in a TV in a shop window, every move presumably watched by unseen millions and a world that had forgotten him.

A celebrated connoisseur of sunsets returns to the town where his absurd, lucrative career began to witness the world's very last dying of the light.

From the International Booker Prize-winning author Georgi Gospodinov, comes a collection of his finest short stories. Each has one eye on the past, one on the future; an ear for the crucial detail that everyone else is missing; and the ability to reveal the ever-changing, ever-beautiful world as you have never seen it before.