A House in Istria (New Directions Paperbook)

A wild and quixotic novel about real estate, marriage, and obsession.

A House in Istria is a crazily comic novel about a man, his long-suffering wife, and his fixation with buying the abandoned house next door. But, in this Croatian region of Istria, the neighbors frown upon the husband as a Westerner who knows nothing about Balkan history or the area's deep blood feuds. "Forget that house," they tell him: "It's not for sale."