Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow

Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow

Boukova, Iana
Petrova, Ekaterina

Paperback

General Fiction

Publisher Price: $19.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 22, 2026

ISBN13: 9798896230830
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: Sep 22 2026
Pages: 296
Language: English
The fates of eight characters in the nineteenth-century Balkans intertwine in this metafictional book of strange quests and nested narratives for fans of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.

A woman who reads the future in the faces of her lovers, a dice-player whose unfailing luck becomes a curse, a manuscript illuminator who leaves his monastery to become a most fearsome bandit. Set in the Balkans in the nineteenth century, Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow follows eight characters--all defined by a quest, all marked by a hidden, often torturous talent--whose fates become inextricably interwoven. One of the characters, novelist Ian van Athen, may even be the progenitor of all the rest--although reality has a way of defying fiction, and vice versa, and van Athen soon discovers not even he is immune to the undeniable logic of story, to the twists and turns of his own fate...

Rich with classical allusions and nested narratives that recall the fictions of Calvino and Borges, Iana Boukova's enthralling novel about the pleasures and perils of storytelling appears here in Ekaterina Petrova's masterful translation, and is imbued with all the beauty and unexpectedness of poetry.

The translation of Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow has been made possible with the financial support of the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria, 2024 Translation Program, and in partnership with the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation.

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