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…

Have I ever told you my own theory about the inverted perspective on happiness? It’s simple, and sounds eccentric only at first hearing. People my age, I suppose, are well acquainted with the empirical side of the matter, even if perhaps less inclined to generalise as generously…

He was a brave bastard. He knew it – no longer needed to prove it. He’d learned the trick over the years – at first unconsciously, just by instinct, then more and more through experience. Fear is only strong when it’s behind you, when it still has a chance to strike from the…

A Week in Paradise Shame rides on the edge of the familiar The sky above Berlin glows as if polished by careful German hands... Sounds flat, Vladko thinks. Pure kitsch. A sky is a sky—nowhere does it say Made in Germany. He gazes again at the tangle of steel scaffolding,…