Astronaut!

'Part thriller, part fable, this is fascinating, funny and very moving - highly recommended.' - GUARDIAN 'Brilliant, compulsive and thrilling. I will be reading this book again!' - Alice Winn , author of IN MEMORIAM 'One of the best novels I've read this year.' - Joanna Quinn , author of The Whalebone Theatre 'You will love this book!' - Jennifer Croft , translator of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk and author of The Extinction of Irena Rey ~ ~ ~ Romania, 1989: a grey place of mysterious queues, ubiquitous informers and daily news flashes about a man-eating bear that is terrorising the country. Amidst the daily drudge of work, rationing and careful conversation with neighbours, two lives unexpectedly collide when an idealistic police detective, Constantin , is tasked with solving a string of grisly murders, and a rebellious school child, Lia , is unwittingly drawn into her elderly neighbour's seditious plot. Dryly satirical, incredibly tense and deeply moving, ASTRONAUT! is both a detective novel and a coming-of-age tale, one with a perennially relevant message: the lies we accept today become the truths of tomorrow. More praise for ASTRONAUT!: 'Had me on the edge of my seat' - Kenan Orhan , author of The Renovation 'If Solzhenitsyn and Hans Christian Andersen had had literary offspring, it might be Oana Aristide.' - Saïd Sayrafiezadeh , author of American Estrangement 'Completely absorbing.' - Georgina Godwin , broadcaster and literary journalist 'With dark, bone-dry wit [. . . ] Astronaut! is quite unlike anything else so far this year.' - IRISH TIMES