The Dog Stars

About the book

Nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2013

Translated by Borislav Stefanov

Cover by Nikolay Pekarev

ISBN 978-954-8208-99-4

Price 14 lv.

Hig survives the flu epidemic that kills everyone around him (yes, the end of the world has come). His wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airfield with his dog Jasper and his only neighbor—an armed-to-the-teeth misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, he patrols the perimeter of the airfield or heads into the mountains to fish, pretending that things are as they used to be. But when he picks up a random transmission on the radio, the mysterious voice sparks hope in him that somewhere out there there may be a better life—something like his old life. Risking everything, he crosses the point beyond which there won't be enough fuel to make it back. What he finds, and what he must confront—in the people he meets and in himself—is both better and worse than anything he had hoped for.

Told by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with exceptional aim and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is very funny and painfully sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

"My only complaint is that the book ended and now I can never read it for the first time again."

siddhartha, Amazon.com

About the author

Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to National Public Radio and writes for Outdoor, Men's Journal, and BusinessWeek. He lives in Denver, but was born and raised in New York. He holds a master's degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, lumberjack, fisherman, canoe and kayak instructor, river expedition guide, and top-notch pizza delivery driver. He is the author of nonfiction books such as Kook, Whale Warriors, and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.