Originally published in Romanian as Circul nostru vă prezintă..., Lucian Dan Teodorovici's novel is a wonderful and inventive work that emerged from post-communist Romanian literature.

Blending absurdist humour with historical trauma, it follows a dead man travelling across Europe with a troupe of Roma circus performers, recounting a life shaped by dictatorship, bureaucracy, prejudice and memory. The result is a novel that shifts effortlessly between satire, fable and political allegory while remaining deeply humane.

Like many of the finest Eastern European writers, Teodorovici understands that comedy and catastrophe are rarely opposites. His narrator moves through surreal encounters and improbable conversations with a voice that is witty, melancholic and quietly philosophical, exposing the absurdity of nationalism, identity and the stories societies tell about themselves. Alistair Ian Blyth's translation captures the novel's fluid movement between the comic and the devastating, making this an ideal introduction to one of Romania's most distinctive contemporary writers.

Published by Dalkey Archive Press, whose catalogue has long championed formally adventurous international literature, this is a rewarding read for admirers of Dubravka Ugrešić, Bohumil Hrabal, Daniil Kharms or the darker comic traditions of Central and Eastern European fiction.

First English edition. Dalkey Archive Press, 2009. Paperback, translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth. Near fine condition. A clean, bright copy with minimal shelf wear. Binding tight and pages fresh throughout.