October 2014 Fiction & Entertainment Arcadia Books

Flesh-Coloured Dominoes Zigmunds Skujinš, translated by Kaija Straumanis

Flesh-Coloured Dominoes
Zigmunds Skujinš, translated by Kaija Straumanis


When Baroness Valtraute von Bruegen's officer husband's body is severed in two she is delighted to find that the lower half has been sewn onto the upper body of the humble local captain Ulste. She conceives a child only to see the return of her husband in one piece.

A beautifully written surrealist novel cum political allegory, Flesh-Coloured Dominoes transports the reader between 18thcentury Baltic gentry and the narrator's life in the modern world. The connection between the two narratives gradually becomes clear in a mesmerising fantasy of love, lust, and loss as Skijunš creates a work of sublime art that is funny, moving, enlightening and philosophical in equal measure.