Mama Leone
by: Miljenko Jergovic / David Williams (Translator)

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 351 pages. 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. Clean, bright copy.