Entering a weird, remote hamlet, Andrei calls himself "a simple wayfarer," but he is in fact highly compromised: he has no identity papers. Taken under the wing of the military zone`s commander, Andrei is first assigned to guard the blueberries that supply a nearby bear reserve. He is surrounded by human wrecks, supernatural umbrellas, birds carrying plagues, albino twins. The bears - and an affair with a married woman - occupy Andrei until his protector is replaced by a new female commander, "a slender creature, quiet,diaphanous, like a dragonfly," and yet an iron-fisted harridan. As things grow ever more alarming, Andrei becomes a "corpse watchman," standing guard over the dead to check for any signs of life, and then ...

"The Sinistra Zone begins a la Chandler. But that`s not how it continues. Like all good things, it embodies a wealth of possibilities: it can be read as a sociological intelligence briefing; a political/cultural situation report; a supplication; a finely wrought, postmodern feat of literary virtuosity; a chronicle of a bygone world, and so on. Again and again I was amazed by the fullness of the words, by the compact and luminous text by the rich and powerful fabric that Adam Bodor has woven into these pages." --Peter Esterhazy