Mama Leone

Written in the shadow of the Yugoslav wars, yet never eclipsed by them, Mama Leone is a delightful cycle of interconnected stories by one of Central Europe`s most dazzling contemporary storytellers. Miljenko Jergovic leads us from a bittersweet world of precocious childhood wonder and hilarious invention, where the seduction of a well-told lie is worth more than a thousand prosaic truths, out into fractured worlds bleary-eyed from the unmagnificence of growing up. Yet for every familial betrayal and diminished expectation, every love and home(land) irretrievably lost, every terror and worst fear realized, Jergovic`s characters never surrender the promise of redemption being but a lone kiss or winning bingo card away. As readers we wander the book`s rhapsodic literary rooms, and as a myriad of unforgettable human voices call out to us, startled, across oceans and continents, we recognize them as our own.