The collection Fairground Magician brings together stories about love fulfilled and unfulfilled, about things that are visible in the everyday world, and values that are perceptible only at exceptional moments. The narration moves from apparent realism to other genres, such as crime fiction, the thriller, and erotic prose. Memories, intimations, and premonitions are infused in these stories with a tranquility that accepts what fate brings, even when, as in the stories “Pockets Full of Stones” or “Nosedive,” efforts are made to change it. Lengold uses eroticism as a natural ingredient of human life, as an integrated tension consisting of two inseparable aspects—body and soul—energizing stories like “Love Me Tender,” “Fairground Magician,” “Zugzwang,” “Wanderings,” and “Aurora Borealis.”
In Fairground Magician, Lengold is a lucid observer of minute details and subtle emotional shifts. In stories like “It Could Have Been Me,” “Shadow,” or “Ophelia, Get Thee to a Nunnery,” she manages to leap over the wall between the bodily surface and the human interior in a very distinctive way. No matter how common the situation she depicts—whether it be a broken marriage, unfulfilled expectations, or the motives of forlorn lovers—Lengold is constantly searching for the authentic, finding it within the sophisticated irony that is a trademark of her fiction.

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Jelena Lengold is a storyteller, novelist, and a poet. Lengold worked as a journalist and an editor for ten years in the cultural department of Radio Belgrade and subsequently worked as a project coordinator in the conflict management program of Nansenskolen Humanistic Academy in Lillehammer, Norway. She now lives in Belgrade, where she works as a freelance journalist and writer.