Alessandro Barbero - The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments

The Anonymous Novel: Sensing the Future Torments, a new novel from a new publisher, Vagabond Voices, situated on the Isle of Lewis. A vivid novel about Russians coping with the transition from communism to capitalism and combines echoes of Bulgakov with elements of a thriller. Strangely it has been written by a successful medieval historian. - Eric Hobsbawm, The Observer, 14.11.10

This is a literary miracle - unique, witty and gripping. It reads like Bulgakov's prose somewhat modernised or even a careful and sensitive translation of the great Russian classics. It is stunningly authentic, and I cannot believe that the author and translator are not Russian... A book to savour and consume slowly... - Vitali Vitaliev, author of Life as a Literary Device (Beautiful Books, 2009)  

Barbero is an absorbing and eloquent narrator who is very capable at continuously juggling an abundance of stories and a great number of characters, whose frenetic movements judiciously evolve with a complicit suspense even when they are entirely marginal and encountered only once duringthe animated events involving those who have the onerous taks of being the main protagonists. - La Stampa

Barbero uses the diabolic skills of an erudite and professional narrator to seek out massacres of the distant and recent past. The Anonymous Novel concerns the past-that-never-passes (whether Tsarist or Stalinist) and the future that in 1988 was impending and has now arrived - Il Giornale

As in a vast Russian river, thousands of rivulets and currents intersect with each other in Barbero's novel, which provides us with an amazing snapshot of the reality of yesterday and today with all the endless nuances, and holds our attention with the events of a police investigation. - L'Indice

Translated by Allan Cameron


Publisher: Vagabond Voices
ISBN: 9780956056047
Pages:  464
Binding: softback
Dimensions: 210x 138 mm

Price: £14.50

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