I’m starting yet another short essay with a familiar mix of feelings: some pleasure, and – inevitably – some tension. The pleasure comes from the discussions that sometimes arise here. However incomplete or misshapen they may be, they remain one of the few genuine rewards for…

I don’t know whether someone told me this or I read it somewhere, but tonight one of those wise-sounding phrases has been spinning around in my head – the kind of thing you’d proudly serve up at a dinner table. It goes like this: “Nothing ages you faster than fulfilled dreams.”…

„Hello,“ said someone behind him, and he nearly slipped off the seat of the worn, spinning chair – his faithful comrade in the endless battle with words. He turned slowly, cursing the pain in his neck that no longer allowed faster movements. The blurred figure across from him…

A Week in Paradise is a sharply observed and darkly humorous account of three Bulgarians arriving in newly reunified Berlin — a city still trembling with history and possibility. The protagonists, Vladko, his brother Boyan, and Vladko’s wife Teodora, form a classic triangle of…