The Man With Many Names

Brimming with his signature warmth and wisdom, the Booker Prize–winning author of Time Shelter returns with a brilliant new collection of stories.

Written over three decades, The Man with Many Names gathers the best of renowned author Georgi Gospodinov’s short fiction into a single new volume. Exhibiting the author at his most playful and profound, the collection captures the peculiarities of existence across forty-one tales set in and around his beloved Bulgaria: In “A Second Story,” strangers pass their time on a train through the Balkans telling stories only to be lost in translation; in “The Late Gift,” an unhoused man becomes convinced he’s on television one frigid New Year’s Eve; and in “Blind Vaysha,” a sightless woman can see into the past and future—one through each eye. Haunting these pages is a flaneur named Gaustine, a familiar trickster known to longtime Gospodinov fans. With bold leaps through time and place and masterfully translated by Angela Rodel, this is another wildly inventive contribution from “one of the indispensable writers of our times” (International Booker Prize Jury).