Book 9789533584126

Igor Štiks’s fourth novel, mysteriously titled with only one letter, W, is his most elaborate so far — and definitely his most exciting — a feat of storytelling in which historic tragedies are woven through with humor and erotic passion. It is both a murder mystery — in which nothing is as it seems and where we don’t learn the truth until the very last page — and a reflection on a century of revolutionary struggles. In it, Štiks asks some of the crucial questions of our era: What are the lessons of past heroic struggles for a world of equality and freedom that were then followed by tremendous disappointments and tragic failures? And what can we do today in the face of contemporary planetary horrors? The novel vividly brings to life the turbulent years of the 1960s through the early 2000s with all their contradictions, disasters and hopes.