Fox by Dubravka Ugrešić

The first UK edition of a masterpiece of European literature, with bespoke handpainted covers from TANK and a new forward from prize-winning author Lisa Appignanesi.

With characteristic wit and narrative force, Fox – translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać – takes us from Russia to Japan, through Balkan minefields and American road trips, and from the 1920s to the present, as it explores the power of storytelling and literary invention, notions of betrayal, and the randomness of human lives and biographies. Using the duplicitous and shape-shifting fox of Eastern folklore as a motif, Ugrešić constructs a novel that reinvents itself over and over, blending nuggets of literary trivia (like how Nabokov named the Neonympha dorothea dorothea butterfly after the woman who drove him cross-country), with the timeless story of a woman trying to escape her hometown and finding love to magical effect. Propelled by literary footnotes and “minor” characters, Fox is vintage Ugrešić, recovering the voices of those on the margins with a verve that’s impassioned, learned, and hilarious. First published by Open Letter in the USA in 2018, this limited edition hardback refreshes Ugresic’s time-travelling masterpiece for UK audiences.