Every nation has its rituals of self-recognition. Some commemorate independence, others revolution, or the birth of constitutions. Bulgaria, like several of its Central and Eastern European neighbors, has chosen something more introspective — a holiday called the Day of the…

I was nine years old when I first realised that what I was speaking wasn’t simply the Bulgarian language, but something stranger, labelled by the incomprehensible word dialect. I was visiting my cousins in the romantic little town of Kavarna (“romantic” means nothing more here…

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…

Beyond the ruined Park lies the Desert of Ghosts — a wasteland where the sun burns the ground white and the nights chill the bones.