In Rory Mac Lean`s groundbreaking debut travel book, Winston the pig drops on to Uncle Peter`s head & kills him dead. Unwilling to be left alone in her house Aunt Zita, a faded Austrian aristocrat & a vivacious eccentric, hijacks her nephew &, together with Winston, sets out on one last ride. The Berlin Wall has fallen only weeks before & Zita is determined to reach across the reopened borders & rediscover her remarkable east European family. In a rattling Trabant the unlikely trio puff & wheeze across the changing continent, following the threads of memory. Zita`s relations
- the angel of Prague, the Hungarian grave digger who buried Stalin`s nose, a dying Romanian propagandist
- help tie together the loose ends of her life. They picnic at Auschwitz. They meet Lenin`s embalmer. They carry a long-lost corpse over the Carpathian mountains. Through war & revolution, decay & regeneration, ” Stalin`s Noseis” a surreal & darkly comic ride & a portrait of Europe like no other.