Billiards at the Hotel Dobray, Paperback

In the narrow corridors and dark rooms of the once-elegant Hotel Dobray in the sleepy town of S bota, in a forgotten land wedged between Hungary and Yugoslavia, human destinies collide like the billiard balls in the hotel's casino. It is late March 1945 and the long war is nearing its end. The Soviet Union's Red Army will soon arrive to liberate the town, although no one knows what to expect. J zsef S rdy, the ruthless leader of a small Hungarian occupation unit stationed at the Hotel Dobray, is preparing for his final battle, even as his debauched soldiers succumb to melancholy and despair. Local industrialist Josip Benko hopes the end of the war will mean large profits for his factory, yet he is doing all he can to save his dying world. And Linna, a former singer who works as a prostitute in the hotel, must confront her divided loyalties. But before her song falls silent, the Jewish merchant Franz Schwartz, one of the few to survive the horrors of Auschwitz, returns to S bota on foot, pursuing the strains of a remembered violin.

Goran Vojnovic is a filmmaker and screenwriter. He co-wrote he film Good Luck Nedim!, which won the Heart of Sarajevo Award. He has directed three short films and one feature film. He is the author of Southern Scum Go Home! and When Jimmy Choo Meets Fidel Castro. Rawley Grau, originally from Baltimore, has lived in Ljubljana since 2001. His translation of Dusan Sarotar's Panorama was shortlisted for the 2017 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. His translation of A Science Not from the Earth won the AATSEEL Prize for Best Scholarly Translation in 2016.