Bulgaria lives with an ancient and persistent problem: its identity has been shaped less by an effort to understand what it is than by a stubborn flight from what it fears it might turn out to be. Since the late eighteenth century, the national imagination has developed as a…

Recently, for the umpteenth time, I watched The Wall again — Pink Floyd and Alan Parker. Only this time, unlike before, I was watching it with my son. I tried to warn him in advance not to pay attention to me: basically, the electric jolt I get every time I encounter this…

The trembling light of the tallow candle – a useful and necessary object, if foul-smelling – mixed with the flicker of the hearth, so that the shadows of the three men, seated on low three-legged stools and taking turns sipping from a bowl of thick bean stew, for which Hristo…

It begins in a drowsy provincial town — Prespan, somewhere deep in 1980s Bulgaria — at a moment when history quietly forgets its manners. The so-called “Revival Process” is in full swing, and neighbour turns against neighbour in a fog of fear, confusion, and officially…