What would you do if you were thirteen, and your aunt wanted to marry you off to get rid of you? Kura decides to steal her uncle's flightless riding-bird, the vicious and unpredictable Plume, and set off to find her real parents. This is Antarctica, ten thousand years ago, when for a short time just the coastal strip is ice-free. It's a bit like prehistoric New Zealand - all the evolutionary niches have been filled by birds, and the main predator is a giant eagle. Joeli is also running away from home because he thinks he's killed his tutor-parrot, the clever and self-opinionated Kohuru. Kura...

Four British poets accept an invitation to make a cultural visit to a little-known ex-soviet country and soon find themselves in a Kafkaesque labyrinth of mistaken identity, fake email addresses, impossibly high stilettos and impossibly cheap vodka. Clever, inventive and funny, Beware of Men with Moustaches twists and turns its way through the literary and scenic highlights of Karetsefia, as its characters gradually become aware of their own insularity in a country which is struggling to come to terms with its new identity - and where people have more to worry about than whether or not their...