Border State Tônu Ônnepalu May 2000 Northwestern 4 3/4 x 8, 100 pp. Trade Paper ISBN 0-8101-1780-0 / $ 14.95 Add to shopping cart

A story of misguided passion, Border State offers a brilliantly realized account of a man in the grip of Western excess, emotionally crippled by a world that is subsuming his own and inhabiting a West in which "all countries have become imaginary deserts of ruins where crowds of nomads roam from one attraction to the other." His tale, in which disillusion and murder become inextricably linked, is a compelling exploration of scarcity, longing, and madness. "This short novel. . .speaks suggestively about the agony of 'hoping against hope,' the intensity of expecting the 'great indescribable' to happen, as in Ibsen's tragedies and Beckett's Waiting for Godot." --World Literature Today "Offers a rare, brilliantly realized account of a lost man in the grip of Western excess, emotionally crippled by a world that is subsuming his own." --Translation Review