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…

A strange thing happened — I woke up yesterday and found the world to be… good. I should say straight away: I hadn’t smoked anything. I simply opened my eyes — outside, a grey and grubby morning — rolled out of bed, scratched myself where one usually scratches in the morning……

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…

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…