Eva Markun’s gripping and eerie stories, set between the harsh Slovene countryside and dirt roads somewhere in Cambodia, depict the endless conflict between nature and culture: humans, always perceiving new imaginary threats, fight other animals for living space or try to dominate nature. Challenging the conditions of otherness, Eva Markun invites the reader into exciting liminal spaces, where different existences, subject to fear and projection, are suddenly – and more or less violently – confronted.

Eva Markun (1990) is a writer, translator, beekeeper, and environmental consultant, who has traveled extensively to Southeast Asia, mostly Cambodia. Menagerie, her debut, a short prose collection, was published in 2017 and awarded the Novo Mesto award for the best collection of short stories as well as the award for the best literary debut.

The included short stories have been selected from the short story collection Menagerie.