Open Water : Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021

'Cartarescu is one of the great literary voices of Central Europe' Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize winner and author of Flights'A Danubian Narnia. . . his writing delivers a rainbow-hued riot of fantasy, imagination and invention' Boyd Tonkin, SpectatorA dreamlike novel of memory and magic, Nostalgia turns the dark world of Communist Bucharest into a place of strange enchantments. Here a man plays increasingly death-defying games of Russian Roulette, a child messiah works his magic in the tenements, a young man explores gender boundaries, a woman relives her youth and an architect becomes obsessed with the sound of his new car horn - with unexpected consequences. Blending reality and symbolism, time and myth, this is a cult masterwork from Romania's most celebrated writer.