A01=Rory MacLean
adventure
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
allegory
amusing
Author_Rory MacLean
autobiography
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=WTH
Category=WTL
comical
COP=United Kingdom
Czechoslovakia
dark humour humor
debut book
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
east european family
eccentric
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_travel
european history
exciting
expedition
germany
hungary
Language_English
memoir
moscovy
moscow
original
PA=Available
poland
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
romania
softlaunch
surreal
travel writing
unique
Product details
- ISBN 9780755617074
- Weight: 198g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 28 Nov 2019
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Through war and revolution, decay and regeneration, Stalin's Nose is a surreal and darkly comic ride and a portrait of Europe like no other.
Rory MacLean's ground-breaking debut travel book begins when Winston the pig drops onto Uncle Peter's head and kills him dead. Unwilling to be left alone in her house Aunt Zita, a faded Austrian aristocrat and a vivacious eccentric, hijacks her nephew and, together with Winston, sets out on one last ride.
The Berlin Wall has fallen only weeks before and Zita is determined to reach across the reopened borders and rediscover her remarkable east European family. Zita's relations - the angel of Prague, the Hungarian grave digger who buried Stalin's nose, a dying Romanian propagandist - help tie together the loose ends of her life. They picnic at Auschwitz. They meet Lenin's embalmer. They carry a long-lost corpse over the Carpathian mountains.
In a rattling Trabant the unlikely trio puff and wheeze across the changing continent, following the threads of memory.
Rory MacLean was born and educated in Canada and now lives with his family in Dorset. He has won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work prize and an Arts Council Writers' Award, was twice shortlisted for the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Prize and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award. He is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 and 4.
His books, including best-sellers Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon, have challenged and invigorated travel writing, and - according to the late John Fowles - are among works that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. Author Katie Hickman confirmed this statement: 'Rory MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of our generation'.
