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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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BOBO

Linor Goralik

In the tradition of Gogol comes this sharp satire on modern-day Russia, told as an elephant's journey towards the condemnation of war.
Arriving on a barge from Istanbul to Kerch on March 1st, 2022, Bobo is the war elephant gifted by the Turkish sultan to the Russian Tsar. An arduous journey on foot awaits him across Russia to Orenburg, where the Tsar is hiding in his bunker, sitting out an unsuccessful war. What also awaits Bobo is a rude awakening.

As he travels from city to village to town, Bobo meets a cast of characters. He expected to fall in love with his new homeland. But, he learns what contemporary Russia is really like, where its leader's abuse of power has led it and what that means for its neighbour. After encountering unrelenting propaganda, police brutality, corruption, and the miserable existence of the Tsar's subjects, Bobo discovers who he truly is and what he wants to stand for once he can shake off the shackles of hopeful servitude.

Written with sparkling wit, expertly weaving the child-like curiosity into political reality, this novel draws on Russian history as well as the most recent news. BOBO is a spellbinding bildungsroman and a powerful statement against the Russian regime.

Linor Goralik is a Ukrainian-born author, poet, artist, essayist, and marketing specialist who lives in Israel and writes in Russian. Goralik wrote for various media as a columnist, taught fashion theory, published poetry, flash fiction, short stories, novels, comics, kids' books, and non-fiction more than 20 titles in total. She also translates poetry and prose from English and Hebrew into Russian. In 2022, Goralik founded ROAR: Resistance and Opposition Arts Review. She also has an oppositional news-based Russian-language podcast for teenagers and creates handmade art pieces and jewelry, part of the proceeds of which goes to Ukrainian charities. In August 2023, Goralik was declared "foreign agent" by the Russian government despite never having held the Russian citizenship, though she did live there in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Goralik stopped BOBO's 2023 Russian-language publication at the eleventh hour, fearing that the publisher and the distributors might be prosecuted for it. We hope that readers all around the world will join Bobo on his journey.