I want to begin with a story I would rather not recall too often. It was 1984. I was twenty-three, a philosophy student in the capital, travelling back to Preslav for one of the holidays. I was weighed down by a tangle of thoughts that felt literally impossible to share. The…

I suppose many of you have heard that now-iconic Beckett quote: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. The fact that I’m beginning to reflect on this particular theme is, of course, no coincidence. Failure as theory and failure as reality are two…

The sound of the footsteps – dragging and slow, like someone shuffling their heels across the floor – was driving him mad. Every time they came from above, he would change rooms: from the living room to the kitchen, then through the dreadfully creaky glazed door into the small…

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…