The Black Box

(Paperback)

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Description

In 1990 two Bulgarian brothers, Ned and Ango, receive an unusual package from theUSA: a black plastic box containing the ashes of their late father, a professor allowedout of communist Bulgaria to teach in the USA during the 1980s.However, the brothers are left with a nagging sense that something is not quiteright. Since neither of them has seen the body they begin to doubt if he is he reallydead. But if the death had been faked, why Fifteen years later, as the brothers forgenew and very different lives (Ned a management consultant; Ango a dog walker tothe rich) in their new home in New York, some answers begin to emerge . . .A darkly comic tale of disillusionment, The Black Box explores the nature andlogic of our Western neo-liberal capitalist system and how so many of us are alldriven to acts of greed, imprudence and recklessness in the pursuit of money andwealth.

Reviews

"Prize-winning Bulgarian novelist Alek Popov has a uniquely scabrous view of Bulgarians abroad . . . In "The Black Box," Popov devotes his comic energy to two Bulgarian brothers . . . "[The] Black Box" wrestles with the parochial view that there are two places in the world: Bulgaria, and everywhere else." Richard Beard, contemporarybulgarianwriters.com"

Author Bio

Alek Popov is the prize-winning author of widely translated collections of short stories, and his first novel, "Mission London," has been published into fifteen languages and was adapted into a hugely successful film. He is also the author of "The Palavei Sisters," and is part of the editorial body of "Granta-Bulgaria "magazine.