Circus Bulgaria - Deyan Enev; Kapka Kassabova (Paperback) 05-08-2010 Long-listed for Frank O'Connor Short Stories Award 2010 (UK).

A boxer-turned-hitman faces an impossible mission to kill his brother; an old lady sets up a gang of her own teenage vigilantes after being mugged; a retired geography teacher dreams of places he's never been; a clown on the make talks an impoverished lion tamer into selling his lion to gangsters; and a fading beauty is courted by a suitor with suspiciously scaly hands... Drawing on the monsters and myths of Balkan folklore, the brutal reality of the Communist regime and the dazzling magic of Enev's own imagination, these stories have a surreal and almost hypnotic quality. Absurd, both painfully funny and deeply sad, Circus Bulgaria reaches straight into the cracked heart of Eastern Europe.