The Man With Many Names

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.