Flesh-Coloured Dominoes

"Extraordinary and unforgettable characters" WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

"Rich and many layered . . . fascinating" CHRISTOPHER MOSELEY

When Baroness Valtraute von Bruegen's officer husband's body is severed in two she is delighted to find that the lower half has been sewn onto the upper body of the humble local Captain Ulste. She conceives a child only to see the return of her husband in one piece. What happens next is both indescribably funny and darkly painful.

A beautifully written Surrealist novel-cum-political allegory, Flesh-Coloured Dominoes transports the reader between 18th-century Baltic gentry and the narrator's life in the modern world. The connection between the two narratives gradually becomes clear in a mesmerising fantasy of love, lust, and loss as Skijuns creates a work of sublime art that is funny, moving, enlightening and philosophical in equal measure.

Translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis