SMALL STORIES She likes to write notes— “I love you” to her husband, “I’m thinking of you” to her child, “Thank you” to her mother. It’s a little ludicrous actually, but her loved ones don’t speak of these things, even pretend they’ve never discovered anything in their pockets. Still, she’s been doing this a while— … Continue reading Olya Stoyanova: Small Stories
Fairness Fairness? The slogan reads: “The music we all love”. From the burglars of military warehouses, stalls overflowing with camouflage equipment and boots, to salesmen lined up on the road to the sea. “The music we all like” is a shelf of pop discs in a petrol station. The field burns. The vase with sunflowers … Continue reading Alexander Nikolov: Fairness
Road Trip! Has every literary road trip you’ve taken involved highways in your own country? Bulgarian novelist Angel Igov has written a short adventure of 145 pages that will make a reader feel they are on summer vacation even if its the dead of winter. Interestingly, this road trip takes place across the Balkan roads … Continue reading Angel Igov: A Short Tale of Shame – A Review by Karen Van Drie
Visit I visit my homeland the way a snail tries to fit back into his old shell. Day after day I writhe inside, counterclockwise. The shell is rough and narrow, opens sores on coddled parts But I persist, eat tarator, cry over graves, until I conform to my old contours. Finally, I am here. Snail … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: Visit
Bulgarian Literature Month has so far brought you an - of course incomplete - overview regarding books related to our topic. (A few more blog posts are about to follow.) But it goes without saying that there are quite a lot of online resources and journals (in print or electronic form) that also give an … Continue reading Bulgarian literature: Online and print resources – and a poetic experiment
Night and Day Your transparent shoulders Your transparent eyes Your transparent brain Your transparent womb Your transparent knees At night you shine all over like a central intelligence agency Analysts are walking within calculating the odds At the other end of the world a man is blown up another’s walking on four legs with a … Continue reading Kiril Vassilev: Night and Day
There are not many books in English that are covering the recent political events and developments in Bulgaria. Bulgaria: Politics and Protests in the 21st Century by Clive Leviev-Sawyer (Riva Publishers 2015) is one of the few exceptions and I read it therefore with great interest. The author, an experienced journalist who moved 2001 from … Continue reading Bulgarian and South-Eastern European Politics: two interesting books
AND ALL THE INDIANS the other day Uncle Manfred passed away may heaven’s light shine on him! let the weather he forecasts always be nice— he was a retired meteorologist celebrated his birthdays year after year with a folk orchestra and buffet in the banquet hall of the school (I have a photo where I … Continue reading Petja Heinrich: And All The Indians
My Tongue, My Enemy Without you—blood in the mouth. I swallow, the Latin serifs scratch. My tongue, my brother. Decorated, perforated— metal ball rolls along the teeth like a perverse arrowhead. Tongue or Death. My tongue, my own carcass. My tongue, another friend whom I’ve betrayed. Shouldering guilt, the innocent start running. My tongue, my … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: My Tongue, My Enemy
The fight for national liberation in the 19th century has been an important subject of many works of Bulgarian literature since Ivan Vazov’s novel „Under the Yoke“ (written 1887-1888; it was the first novel written in Bulgarian language). While most of these works focus on the story of an individual, a small group of people, … Continue reading Galina Zlatareva: The Medallion
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 