I was bewitched by this strangely beguiling novel, beautifully written and conceived with an astonishing imaginative range. Ruskov writes like an angel.Alex Miller (Author of "Journey to the Stone Country")----A humorous picaresque set in sixteenth-century Spain, THROWN INTO NATURE tells the story of Dr. Nicolás Monardes, whose medical treatise Of the Tabaco and His Great Vertues was partially responsible for introducing tobacco to Europe. His Portuguese assistant, Da Silva, narrates the absurd adventures of the wealthy and influential Dr. Monardes, who steadfastly believed that tobaccowhether the leaves were made into a poultice, the smoke was piped into the anus, or through some other bizarre applicationwas an infallible cure for every physical, and mental, ailment known to man. He even uses clouds of cigarella smoke to chase a poltergeist from a church.A blackly hilarious novel that hides its pessimistic reflections on the power of money, the evils of charlatanism, and the gullibility of humanity behind the comic observations and adventures of the always striving and forever bumbling Da Silva, Milen Ruskovs THROWN INTO NATURE is a comic tour de force.-----About the author:Milen Ruskov (1966), a Bulgarian writer and translator, graduated from Sofia University in 1995. He has written two novels: Pocket Encyclopaedia of Mysteries, which was awarded the Bulgarian Prize for Debut Fiction, and THROWN INTO NATURE, which was awarded the prize for VIK Novel of the Year. Working as a translator from English, he has translated more than twenty books, including "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" by Thomas De Quincey, "Novel Notes and The Angel and the Author" by Jerome K. Jerome, "Money" by Martin Amis, and "Transformation" by Mary Shelley. In 2009, he won the Elizabeth Kostova Foundations Krustan Dyankov Translation Award for his translations of "Money" by Martin Amis and "De Niros Game" by Rawi Hage.