From the acclaimed author of 'Tokyo Cancelled'. A blind man approaches his one hundredth birthday in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. He spends his time musing on a magazine piece he read some years ago, before he lost his sight: explorers had come upon a company of jungle parrots that still spoke snatches of the language of an extinct society. The birds were then captured in the hope that linguists might begin to piece together the lost language from their puzzling squawks and screeches. But the birds died on the way back, taking with them the last remnants of a disappeared civilisation. The blind man fears that he too carries within him only a shredded inheritance, and that he is too concussed, too remote to pass anything on. Throughout this lyrical, moving and deeply imaginative novel, the blind man leads us through the twists and turns of his country's turbulent century and his own, equally engaging story of enlightenment, love and loss.

WINNER OF THE 2010 COMMONWEALTH WRITER'S PRIZE FOR BEST BOOK.