"One of the most amusing and poignant anti-heroes since Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum" lives up to his misfit heritage in this ribald debut ( Spike Magazine). Ask Rovar Ákos Pfliegman about himself and he'll say: "I have no life. I have no known relatives, no known friends. I'm barely human. I'm a hairy little Hungarian pulp. I am a sorry gathering of organs. That is all." But there is more to Rovar than meets the eye. He has a pet beetle named Mrs. Kipner, he is a butcher plagued by rare ailments, he sells meat out of a broken-down bus next to a river in suburban Virginia, and he is the last of the Pfliegman line, a not-too-bright pagan clan that reaches back to pre-medieval Hungary. He also believes he'll fulfill the ignoble destiny of inbred self-destruction that has wiped out all Pfliegmans before him. But against all odds, and the cruel laws of nature, this unlikely loner, seller of fresh mutton at unbeatable prices, unloved lover, and historian of the unimportant is still capable of being reborn in the most extraordinary way. "Innocent and wise, grave and hilarious, bleak and hopeful, fast-paced and meditative, heartbreaking and heart healthy, evanescent and concrete" (Heidi Julavits), The Convalescent "nods to all sorts of greats—Kafka, Rushdie, Darwin and Grass, to name a few. But Anthony's style—funny, immediate and unapologetically cerebral—carves out a space all its own" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).