The Sinistra Zone Format: Paperback

Lyrical, surreal, and yet unsettlingly realistic, The Sinistra Zone swims in the totalitarian backwaters of Eastern Europe

Entering a weird, remote hamlet, Andrei calls himself “a simple wayfarer,” but he is in fact highly compromised: he has no identity papers. Taken under the wing of the military zone’s commander, Andrei is first assigned to guard the blueberries that supply a nearby bear reserve. He is surrounded by human wrecks, supernatural umbrellas, birds carrying plagues, albino twins.

The bears ― and an affair with a married woman ― occupy Andrei until his protector is replaced by a new female commander, “a slender creature, quiet,diaphanous, like a dragonfly,” and yet an iron-fisted harridan. As things grow ever more alarming, Andrei becomes a “corpse watchman,” standing guard over the dead to check for any signs of life, and then … 

The author of ten volumes of fiction since 1969, Ádám Bodor is an award-winning, Transylvanian-born Hungarian writer.

Paul Olcháry has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and Hungary’s Milán Fu¨st Foundation.