"A compelling thriller."—Los Angeles Times

"Zift is sort of a flaming shot of rotgut smuggled in from the outdated country…Vladislav Todorov adroitly makes use of the yank style of noir to excoriate the political villains of his homeland's past…Zift is gritty and brisk."—Matt Jakubowski, City Paper

"Todorov's uncooked, hard-boiled parody takes lifeless objective at noir and leaves it gasping for breath."—Michael Pinker, Review of up to date Fiction

December 21, 1963: Having served two decades for a homicide he did not dedicate, "Moth" exits relevant Sofia felony waiting for his first evening of freedom. as an alternative he steps right into a new and alien world—the nightmarish totalitarianism of Communist Bulgaria. In his first hours of freedom he traverses the map of a diabolical urban, packed with decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets, and a weird and wonderful parade of characters.

A novel of grave wit, Zift unfolds during a unmarried, frenetic evening, supplying a fast paced, ghoulish, even grotesque—but additionally enchanting—tour of shadowy, socialist Sofia. to accomplish his depiction of totalitarian absurdity, Vladislav Todorov combines the tools of hardboiled American crime fiction and picture noir with socialist symbols and communist ideological clichés.

"Todorov was once evidently raised on a gradual vitamin of yankee noir, and it indicates within the pacing, the language, and the shadowy depths of each alleyway, each highway corner."—Jessa Crispin

"…stalking its style with the meticulousness of an murderer, whereas at the same time parodying it. a singular that unfolds over a unmarried evening, in one breath—and additionally reads that way…a black-and-white cinematographic imaginative and prescient of early-1960s Sofia by means of Night."—Georgi Gospodinov, writer of Natural Novel

"The novel interweaves the most important tropes of Soviet socialist realism and American hard-boiled detective fiction to provide a richly intertextual portrayal of a nightmarish—yet comical—Bulgarian communist society in past due 1963."—Three Percent

"Pulp fiction by way of a historian of ideas."—Literary Weekly

"Tongue flambé."—Kultura

"Zift is a play at the pulp noir style, in booklet and movie, and Todorov has enjoyable enjoying it to the hilt."—The entire Review

"Zift is a component noir, half crime tale, half social satire, half black comedy (extremely black), half absurdist fairy tale."—BiblioBuffet

Zift, Vladislav Todorov's debut novel, used to be a finalist for the 2007 Vick Prize as Bulgarian Novel of the 12 months and a nominee for the Elias Canetti nationwide Literary Prize. Todorov additionally wrote the screenplay for the 2008 movie model of Zift. Variety hailed the motion picture as "an immediate nighttime fest fave." Todorov teaches movie and literature on the college of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Benatov holds a BA and an MA from Sofia college and a PhD in comparative literature from the college of Pennsylvania, the place he at the moment teaches.