Камбаната

Bulgarian villages are emptying, each left with a handful of silent old people whom the state has given up on and who suffer the attacks of 'wolves'. Someone has to stand up for them, and it falls to Veno, an old jailbird nicknamed Samurai, noble despite his past. The novel opens brutally, with a death in a prison toilet, and moves like a crime story through scenes of violence and cruelty, yet it is also a biblical parable: a priest tells Veno that the time has come to save the bell and to climb onto the cross of his own will. Love, a sense of justice and a raw feeling for nature run through a story that turns the ex-convict into a defender of the weak, a samurai guarding villagers who never win.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

208 pages in the original

Set in

Bulgaria

First published

2016 by Hermes

Author's age

64 when first published

ISBN

9789542616405 (original)