Books by Chris Gudgeon

Some days, it doesn't pay to be a lapsed pretend Buddhist, particularly when you�ve been charged with a lengthy list of war crimes. Zavida Zankovic's world has come undone. Caught up in the insanity of war and the capers of a larger-than-life father, he has subsisted on the black market, been forced into the army, deserted when trying to save a young boy trapped beneath a mountain of corpses, and lived by his wits. Now, he awaits trail on a dizzying array of charges -- Fomenting Treason, Providing Material Support for a Terrorist Organization, Consorting with History. He has survived the Balkan wars with only his life and a lamb to show for it. To keep his sanity, he gathers up the threads of his past and spins an audacious narrative that includes a levitating holy man, "bombs" of western consumer products, and stories that may or may not be true. In this sly, often amusing novel, Chris Gudgeon exposes the universal human experience like never before, crafting a transcendent tale that leads through some of the darkest moments of the late twentieth century. As he weaves strands of Balkan mythology into the real events of war, Gudgeon creates a story that blurs the distinction between fact and fiction, between the stories we tell ourselves and those that we tell others.

All you need is love. All you get is sex . . . the saying is all too true in the strange private lives revealed in "Greetings from the Vodka Sea."A prim English bride honeymooning beside the Vodka Sea learns first-hand about drinking the water in foreign parts. A naive doctor and his wife diverge in a group sex session masquerading as therapy. A man with a past plots to seduce a deteriorated middle-aged woman who could expose him. Paths cross, whether by accident or by design. Life's randomness is offset by dark comedy, the dream-logic of fantasy, and an eerily familiar synchronicity.