Guarding Hanna

Guarding Hanna is a thoroughly unique black comedy by bestselling Slovenian novelist and screenwriter Hiha Mazzini, trans. by Maja Visenjak-Limon and Mark White. The unnamed narrator is badly deformed, with the face ""of a prize boar"" and a fondness for Bach. Raised in an orphanage, he leaves when he is recruited to work as a debt collector by a Berlin gangster named Maestro. He is upgraded to ""protection specialist"" and assigned to guard Hanna Woyczik, a witness to a crime committed by a rival gang member. His only experiences with women have been with prostitutes, so he is horrified to learn that he must spend seven days alone with her as they await the trial. Not only is Hanna unfazed by his appearance, she chats endlessly and drags him along on errands. She gradually makes him her involuntary confessor, regaling him with stories of her ex-husbands and her nymphomaniac mother. It should come as no surprise that he falls in love with his charge, but that's the only predictable element of this delightfully perverse and oddly touching story.