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…

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 woke with the vivid sense that he had just spoken to her in French – and not informally, but using vous. The surprise struck a little later, as he gradually came to, realising that French wasn’t a language he could actually speak – not when awake, at any rate. He tried to…

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,…