Seven Terrors

After nine months of self-imposed isolation following his wife's departure, the hero of Seven Terrors finally decides to face his loneliness and join the world once more. However, when the daughter of his old friend Alex appears in his flat one morning with the news that her father has disappeared, he realizes that his life is again about to change. As the two search for clues in Alex's war diary, unearthed in a library in Sweden, they come upon tales of unspeakable horror and mystery: meetings with ghosts, a town under siege, demonic brothers who ride on the wings of war, and many more things so dangerous and so precious that they can only be discussed by the dead. Readers will be drawn further and further into a surreal world where rationality has vanished, evil spreads like a virus, and not even love can offer an escape. While Charon, Hades' mythical ferryman, can be found behind the wheel of a taxi and dead horses are seen flying across the sky, our hero endeavors to cling to his sanity, doing his best to solve the riddle of Alex's disappearance while attempting to save his own soul and bring love back into his life.

Los Angeles Review of Books

"Seven Terrors is simply awesome."

Guardian

"It's quite unlike anything I've read before, but it has all the consistency and force of something major and assured. . . It is the most extraordinary novel: and, as far as I can tell from its readability, very well translated by Coral Petkovich, too."

Literalab

"The great read of the year for me, a book which manages to weave the mythic horror familiar from legend and modern masters of the fantastic like Bulgakov and Leo Perutz with the horrors of the Balkan war and human cruelty. A search for a an old friend who seems to have disappeared into the mythical underworld gets the novel s protagonist out of bed after nine months of bemoaning his wife's leaving him. His friend's traces get him in contact with the other kind of underworld and two of the most deftly drawn villains of contemporary fiction the Pegasus brothers lovers of death from childhood and ghostly white from head to toe. The book is an original and compelling approach to understand the way man can become a monster and then man again."

Independent

"For all its wry humour and playfulness, this is a deeply serious exploration into the legacy of the Bosnian War, in which the fantastic elements are representative of an historical trauma too awful to describe directly."

a fascinating and disturbing insight into how lost a man can become when his life vanishes from under his feet."

"Surreal and compelling

Dr. Catherine Baker, author, Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia Since 1991

"Selvedin Avdic weaves Bosnia's distinctive and multicultural history into a taut tale of psychological horror. The supernatural and the political merge into a compelling secret history of a city living with the effects of war."

About the Author

Selvedin Avdic is the author of a collection of short stories, Tennants and other Fantoms, a tourist guide to the historic Bosnian town of Jajca, and a factual account of Zenica prison. Seven Terrors was shortlisted for one of the most prestigious literary awards in the region, and Coral Petkovich's translation was longlisted for the Dublin Impac Literary Award. Nicholas Lezard is an English journalist and literary critic. Coral Petkovichis previously translated Hair Everywhere.

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