Twenty Levs or Death

Karl-Markus Gauß is travelling again. In the Republic of Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, he becomes infected with »Moldovan longing« – a sympathy for the country and its people. And in well-known and remote Bulgarian regions alike, he encounters a country very different from the one from which we only hear a stream of negative political news. On the streets and squares of Zagreb, he discovers the interplay of memory and forgetting that is a feature of Croatia’s national culture. And finally, in Vojvodina, once a miniature version of Europe, he goes in search of traces of his Danube Swabian mother.

Knowledgeable about the past and present of these countries, Gauß combines reportage, cultural history and autobiography to write gripping travel literature in an unrivalled way.

Karl-Markus Gauß shows us the richness and diversity that characterise Europe. »He inspires us to leave our homes and imaginations, and set off.« Andrzej Stasiuk