My Bulgarian Adventure

The special Bulgarian issue of Absinthe was published last month and I had the opportunity to go to Bulgaria to launch the issue at the invitation of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation is a wonderful organization, founded by the American writer Elizabeth Kostova, that works to promote Bulgarian literature and writers through a number of programs, including the Sozopol Fiction Seminar. More on that later. 

View of Black Sea from my room

My trip to Bulgaria got off to a rough start when, as I feared, I missed my connecting flight in Paris despite arriving at Charles de Gaulle 50 minutes before my flight for Sofia was scheduled to depart.  I arrived at the gate to see my plane still sitting there. I was not allowed to board even after explaining that my flight arrived 15 minutes late from Detroit, we were then not allowed to leave the plane for several minutes due to a mentally ill passenger (seated directly behind me) needing medical assistance. Instead I was informed (as if I was travelling for the first time) that this was not a bus and I could not arrive at the last minute and expect to get on my plane. I came very close to shouting a few ugly American profanities but, thankfully, the presence of a cute 2-year old Bulgarian boy standing nearby caused me to edit my protests. I did, however, decide to boycott French Fries for one week.

I then discovered that the international phone service I had set up with Verizon before I left was not set up properly so I could not use my phone until I’d spent an hour on a pay phone calling my wife and then Verizon. Once that problem was fixed and I’d called Bulgaria to let my hosts know that I would not be arriving until that night, I “enjoyed” five hours in the airport before catching the next flight. But onto the great part of my trip …

I was greeted in Bulgaria by the smiling (and amazing) director of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, Milena Deleva, and my first experience in Bulgaria was welcoming. By the way, Milena spent many hours working on the Bulgarian issue of Absinthe and we owe great thanks to her for helping to get the issue done.  Since I arrived late (and tired after 18 hours of traveling) I did not get to see Sofia that first night.

Jill Schoolman, Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, and Anthony Georgieff

The next morning it was on a bus for the drive to Sozopol and the drive, though fun, was much longer than advertised. It was a good way to become acquainted with the others heading to Sozopol for the fiction seminar and to see the country. Much of the drive reminded me of driving in the western U.S., particularly Colorado.

After we arrived in the beautiful, Black Sea town of Sozopol, we got settled into our rooms at the lovely Hotel Diamanti and then headed over to the art gallery for an opening reading. At this opening evening I briefly introduced Absinthe #17 to the seminar participants, faculty, and guests.

Ben George enjoying absinthe

While the writers participated in workshops in the morning, I was able to enjoy the sights. Sozopol is a beautiful town and despite the rain and cooler-than-normal temperatures it was great to explore its old churches and small shops. Unfortunately, the closest I got to a swim in the Black Sea was dipping my toes in one afternoon.

With Garrard Conley, Kathy Flann, and Barry Lopez

The best part of the trip was meeting so many great people: writers, publishers, and translators. It was great to get to know the fellows and one of the highlights of the trip was the reading by the 10 writers who participated: Bistra Velichkova, Cab Tran, Delaney Nolan, Garrard Conley, Garth Greenwell, Kathy Flann, Nikolay Fenerski, Nikolay Petkov, Palmi Ranchev, and Philip Anastassiu.

The afternoons and evenings  included panel discussions, readings, and interesting conversations over dinner and drinks with the seminar faculty (writers Krassimir Damianov, Elizabeth Kostova, Deyan Enev, and Barry Lopez) and other visiting speakers (Ecotone editor Ben George, Vagabond publisher Anthony Georgieff, writers Debra Gwartney and Steven Wingate, Archipelago Books publisher Jill Schoolman, Istros Books publisher Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, and editor of Fiction Writers Review Jeremiah Chamberlin. 

Virginia Zaharieva, photo by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Back in Sofia, my final day in Bulgarian started with a live appearance on Bulgarian TV and I discovered that I am not ready for prime time (or any time, really). The best part of the experience was meeting the Bulgarian filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov, director of the film Avé, recommended in the current issue of Absinthe.

After leaving the studio we headed over to + tova, a cool little cafe, for a reading from Absinthe #17 by many of the writers and translators featured in the issue, including Virginia Zaharieva, Milen Ruskov, Kristin Dimitrova, Krassimir Damianov, Zdravka Evtimova, Maria Doneva, Yanitsa Radeva, Ivan Dimitrov, Nikolay Boykov, Theodora Dimova, Jonathan Dunne, and Angela Rodel. Thanks to Bistra, we also had some absinthe to imbibe after the reading!


The remainder of the day was spent exploring Sofia with Jonathan Dunne and Tsveta Elenkova, and attending another reading by the fellows.

With Garrard Conley; photo by Jeremiah Chamberlin

During my week in Bulgaria I conducted a few brief video interviews that I'll be posting here over the next few weeks so be sure to check back for those.


I'll conclude with a random list of some of the things I'll remember most about my trip to Bulgaria: meeting Cab Tran at breakfast my first morning after arriving late the night before; the lovely hosts at the Hotel Diamanti; the view of the Black Sea from my room; looking forward everyday to the video chats with my son and wife; a dinner conversation with Ben George; Barry Lopez flashing gang signs (!) at me; wishing I recorded all the wisdom I heard during discussions with Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney; entertaining walks around Sozopol with Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, Anthony Georgieff, and translator Christopher Buxton; the nearly underground Orthodox Church in Sozopol; getting to spend time with Jill Schoolman, a publisher I greatly admire; the kindness of Elizabeth Kostova, conversations with Garrard Conley (a future Absinthe editor, I hope!); a conversation with Nikolay Fenerski; getting to know two of my new favorites--Milena Deleva and Simona Ilieva; the warm reception I received from the Bulgarian authors and publishers I met; the incredible generosity of Jonathan Dunne and Tsveta Elenkova; the flat tire on the drive back from Sozopol; the authors at the reading signing a copy of Absinthe for me; the fun discussion about religion and other topics with Kathy Flann, Garrard Conley, Delaney Nolan, Boris Deliradev, and Cab on my final night; and many other great moments.    

Poster at airport in Sofia

If you get an opportunity to attend the Sozopol Fiction Seminar I highly recommend it. You'll have a great time and make many new friends. I look forward to seeing my new friends again very soon.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Ivan Dimitrov

This is the 15th in a series of posts previewing the new issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Ivan Dimitrov.

from Life as a Missing Spoon, translated by Angela Rodel

THE STORY OF MY TRANSFORMATION INTO A JUNKIE began one warm evening in early summer on a park bench near the National Palace of Culture. There my friends and I were drinking beer, discussing Pelevin and thinking of going to a book premiere. What book? You’ll surely ask, since everyone knows that kids these days don’t read much. Well, Kamen asked me the same thing, too.


“The latest book by a writer, an old friend of my mom’s. I think they went to high school together,” I told him.


The writer in question was one of our closest family friends. He was also connected with my parents’ business, since they owned a publishing house.


“OK, but what’s the book about, Nikola?”


Kamen often became intolerable when he got his drink on — he simply loved to argue, to pick apart your every word, and he was pretty aggressive about it. I had long since stopped letting him get to me.


“I haven’t read it, I just glanced through it. But I do know that it’s long-awaited, this writer hasn’t published anything in six years. Rumor has it that it’s gonna be the novel of the year, maybe of the decade. The elusive Big Novel about the transition or some bullshit like that.”


“Wasn’t the literature of grand narratives in crisis?” Kamen smirked.


“Tough to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this novel is the book of the year or the decade. Lots of things point to it, most of all the critics.”


“I don’t give a shit about the critics, dude. What do you think?”


“It’s a novel for a different generation. We’re not there, we’re missing.”


That day, everything was going without a hitch. We were having fun and were slightly buzzed from the beer and any second we would be heading off to a cultural event.

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Ivan Dimitrov and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Yanitsa Radeva

This is the 14th in a series of posts previewing the new issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a story by Yanitsa Radeva.

from The Candy Dish, translated by Angela Rodel

The woman, who was cracking her knuckles and whom the other woman had called “Sophie” before going into the hospital, ordered her second espresso. It was already past 5 p.m., but it wasn’t his job to ask whether it wasn’t a little late, it was his job to sell coffee, so he put a new dose in the little basket and pressed the button on the machine. “With milk,” the woman said and he nodded, stopping the machine when the plastic cup filled halfway and adding a splash of milk, he didn’t feel like asking whether that was enough — “if it isn’t, she’ll say so” — he thought and set the cup in front of her. The woman dug into the sugar bowl, stirred in a whole four spoonfuls and went back to the table by the window to see whether the other woman wasn’t on her way back already. “She’s really taking a long time,” he said to himself, “they usually stay half-an-hour max, they don’t let them stay any longer, but she’s been gone a whole hour now, and she doesn’t seem like anybody too important.” Then it crossed his mind that it might have something to do with that accident today, who knows, he would find out more than they’d reported on the radio — he decided to chat her up. He had a tattoo on his left arm from his stint in the military, they had been quite common back then — a blue anchor, he was in the navy, right? — and he’d racked up quite a bit of experience with that anchor, he couldn’t believe it himself — the chicks, when they saw that anchor in the nightclubs, he didn’t have to say or do anything, they themselves would hike their skirts up more than was necessary to dance the lambada. Back then he’d acquired the habit of rolling up his sleeves, even if he was in short sleeves, he’d push them up anyway — so the anchor was visible — and now, as he went over to the large woman, he rolled up the hairs on his left arm, since he was in a tank top and had nothing else to roll up. “Sometimes I’ve got a mind to strip naked in the afternoons when the sun comes blasting in here,” he would say to his boss, but she only giggled — “you’re so funny” — and never thought to buy an air conditioner.

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Yanitsa Radeva and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Vladimir Zarev

This is the 13th in a series of posts previewing the new issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Vladimir Zarev.

from Worlds, translated by Zlatko Anguelov and Elizabeth Frank


Diana entered the hotel lobby at three minutes to nine exactly. She wore her long fur coat and usual tailored suit; always elegance itself and so obsessively different from his wife, she nevertheless once again reminded him of Doris. With her head proudly erect, she advanced toward him, and Samuel suddenly realized that he could no longer regard her simply as an interesting and gorgeous woman. He’d had the misfortune of reading her manuscript, which had not only had a depressing effect on him but had in all likelihood alienated him from her. But now Diana seemed to be a different person. More remote. Elusive. Beyond his yearning for them to be together.


“I didn’t bring your folder, Ms. Popova, because I don’t know where we’re going.”


“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a smile.


“But I think I understood why you needed the books by Jung.”


“Please, let’s not talk about it,” she said, cutting him off tactfully. “Outside the sun is shining. It’s a wonderful day.”


“We’re not going to talk about it … and the day with you is going to be really wonderful.”


Two husky guys with buzz cuts burst into the lobby in black outfits, with black T-shirts beneath their jackets, black sunglasses, gold chains flowing down their chests. They were noisy and as if faceless, brazen no doubt like their master — for it seemed unlikely that behind such an unabashed display of freedom there stood no master; handguns swung under their jackets. The men showed Diana and Samuel to a new Mercedes, also black, and polished like a cavalryman’s boot. On the seat next to the driver a Kalashnikov had been propped up; its cartridge clip shone with grease. They drove out of town, took off on a deserted highway, then began moving uphill.


“Where are we going?” asked Samuel.


“Top secret,” answered the shorter of the men, stroking his bristling head, and shifting the automatic rifle to his other side.


“Is smoking allowed?”


“Everything is allowed,” he replied, grinning mischievously. His teeth were horse-like — yellow and big.

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Vladimir Zarev and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Vladislav Todorov

This is the twelfth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Vladislav Todorov.

from Zincograph

POWDER


A sense of profuse powdering, a funky smell of powder, cotton ball rubbing powder into oily pores, cheeks, temples, nose, chin, nostrils . . . His face lost its greasy luster and became a breathing fresco.


A sudden thought made him smile, but on the inside, with the back of his face lest the powder should spill — the thought of how Marie Antoinette’s profusely powdered face rolled at the executioner’s feet.


“You’ve got perfect skin.” A coquettish female voice brought him back within the mirrored confines of the makeup room, “oily and elastic.”


“Skin,” he thought, “that’s what’s left of me.”


The powdered man glanced through the door crack of the makeup room into the studio of the popular television show “Scaffold.” The audience had taken their seats and now observed how the stage workers tested the joints of the Scaffold — a light fiberglass construction, a postmodern installation of sorts.


The former diva Vera Pavlov was the talk-show host. She had been reassigned to the National Television owing to advanced-stage bilateral flat feet. This explained her army shoes and the haircut that matched the shoes. Her eyes — wet and loving — revealed her giving nature and constant readiness to breastfeed the starving populace. Vera had characteristically high cheekbones, plump lips, and a vibrant windpipe that could project her voice in the most acoustic ways. Her bust, secured in a tight corset, looked like a pair of river stones mounted on her otherwise fragile frame. A silver-clad ruby teardrop lodged peacefully in its massive groove. The hostess, frugally beautified, had the manners of a bashful yet sexually proficient headmistress. Two glands pulsated on her snow-white neck. Her entire organism was growing visibly agitated.



READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Vladislav Todorov and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Zdravka Evtimova

This is the eleventh in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a short story by Zdravka Evtimova.






From Kuncho

"Don’t waste time. Come to my place quickly! I’ll treat you to a piece of Kuncho as soon as you arrive,” my friend Dara said to me on my mobile. I listened, hesitating. Yesterday, my husband bought a big knife and said he’d use it to slash my throat. I wasn’t too impressed to be honest with you. Let me first explain the way the whole picture looked.


Kuncho was a 21-year-old donkey whose proud proprietor was Dara’s father, Uncle Pesho. The man prepared his cart, then took Kuncho and went to steal tiles, scrap iron, sawdust, plus everything else one could lay his hands on in these parts. I was one of the few who knew the truth about the old donkey and I didn’t take pride in that knowledge. To cut a long story short, it was Uncle Pesho himself who turned Kuncho into minced meat and subsequently into sausages. I was well informed about the substantial role these sausages played in our small town.

Uncle Pesho was stealing scrap iron when Kuncho fell on his belly and started hiccuping and sighing. Then suddenly the animal’s back stopped twitching.

“Why are you doing that to me, man?” Uncle Pesho said to his beast. “Who shall I steal with now? My wife is an old rail like the rusty ones at the railway station. My daughter (he meant Dara, of course), will never get married because no one wants her. The two geese are both so lazy they’d rather kick the bucket than do a stroke of work. I am old and worn out like your horseshoes, Kuncho, but I go filching. Can’t I get a drink like an honest man instead? And what can I steal, my friend? Everything worth stealing has already been stolen. I go out thieving and who do you think I meet? I meet my competitors. They’ve gone out to pilfer something or other, too. So what happens when I see them eye to eye, I ask you? Do we steal the way we should? Not at all! We all sit down and get drunk together. Tell me, Kuncho, didn’t I give you a chunk of my bread all the time? I did! So don’t die, man. Are you leaving me with the slothful female pair, with the old one and the young one? Are you? You can’t die now!”



READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Zdravka Evtimova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Emiliya Dvoryanova

(c) Lilyana Dvoryanova

This is the tenth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Emiliya Dvoryanova.


From Passion, or the Death of Alice, translated by Lubomir Terziev


Never speak ill of the dead — my grandmother used to say, and so it has been accepted indeed; in the past they’d spit right into the mouth of anyone who would speak ill of a dead man so that when they swallow they’d take back their words into their throat.

But now I’m a witness in this case and you’re telling me that as my duty I must speak the truth, but the thing is I know such nasty stuff about the young lady that it makes my hair stand on end and I get them stomach cramps, God bless me, but this being my duty and being a citizen, despite the pangs and creepy though it all is, I’ll be telling you what you want me to — from the beginning, and about the end, nor will I spare the disgraceful details, though I’m filled with shame, but then again, I’m curious enough to know more than I need to know — one finds out about all kinds of human stuff, unwittingly, and sometimes it’s all too human for you to want to find out, because there’s no bounds to oddities and when one of them crops up, you pull yourself to the next, and you produce such a tangle that there’s no telling where it will all end. Well, I might have seen many an awful thing, but never did I predict such an end, and that morning, God bless me, I was summoning up some thoughts about the young lady while I was trying to unlock the gate, which had begun to stick months before, so every morning I had to shove in the key and turn it this way and that way, and at that very moment I thought I’d better not get in at all, it was a peculiar day, after all, a Holy Good Friday, and on days like that one must tune oneself in for God rather than be incited to evil thoughts and fickle feelings at the expense of the soul, and if I were to be strict and Orthodox by the canon, I shouldn’t have worked that day at all, telling the young lady as an excuse that I won’t do no cleaning until she has this rusty piece of iron oiled – I’d told her a hundred times and she would just laugh and then she goes like, well, yes, she’ll ask someone to pour some oil on it.


READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Emiliya Dvoryanova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Krassimir Damianov

(c) Sasha Damianova

This is the eighth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Krassimir Damianov.

from Diary of a Butterfly, translated by Angela Rodel


1.


For a long time I couldn’t find myself a girl after you. I kept looking for your type, your height, your elegance, your screams, your eyes, your voice . . . My eyes often played tricks on me, your slender silhouette would suddenly appear at the end of the street, in the elevator at a store, in the flickering of the streetcar or on the steps in front of the university. I mistook the Vietnamese girls for you — there were lots of them in Sofia at the time — because of your petite figure or I would simply imagine that it could be you with your slanted eyes. Even though you didn’t fit with the cold or the slushy snow on those frosty mornings. Once, as I rode home on trolleybus number two, slightly tipsy, at around eleven o’clock at night, I pressed up against a woman in front of me. Unconsciously at first, there were lots of people on the bus, but then — I sensed her like an animal and felt that she sensed me, too — completely deliberately, with the desperation of a condemned man! Because it was you, your scent of seaweed, your warmth, your body . . . I missed my stop, one, two, and three more. . . Finally we ended up alone in the empty trolley, stuck together like Siamese twins, skin prickling, without speaking, without thinking. As I got off the bus behind you I saw that you had a limp, a heavy limp. . .You stopped, turned around, looked at me with contempt, noticed my shock, and continued wobbling your way along the dark path between the apartment blocks in the unfamiliar neighborhood.  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Krassimir Damianov and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Theodora Dimova

This is the seventh in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Theodora Dimova.

From Liya, translated by Francine Giguere


It’s a disgrace! This country is an absolute disgrace! A fresh perversion — made in Bulgaria! A complete depravity of the mind! Yet another humiliation of artists in Bulgaria! Do you understand what that means! Do you understand what they want to force me to do! Intellectual, artist, man of letters — these are nothing but dirty words in Bulgaria! And because some of us still manage to preserve our integrity and not wade up to our necks in excrement, well, they’ve found another way to deal with us: we’ll carve them with a fine chisel, they think, they’re made of thin ice, the better to get at them perfidiously, in depth and from behind! You bastards! You bastards! You bloody bastards! You’ve destroyed us! You want to wipe us out completely, is that it!? You want to crush us?  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Theodora Dimova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview: Kristin Dimitrova

(c) Mira Dimova

This is the sixth in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Kristin Dimitrova.

From Sabazius

I didn’t expect to see him again. I thought he was dead but perhaps that suited me better. The truth is I went to him myself.

He had chosen an old house in downtown Sofia for an office. As I walked to the place and counted the numbers, I already knew which house that might be. When I was a boy, I used to pass by it regularly on my way to my music classes. An old woman with long fingernails was continually standing at the ground-floor window, keeping record of those who crossed the barrier of her gaze. Her presence was so inevitable that for me the house, the woman and the stench that radiated from her window melted in a trinity of body, spirit and soul. In the hot summer days the smell of hair, unwashed for years, and wetted clothes, unchanged since the last time a caring neighbour donated her old rags, mixed with the deep odour of cellar coming from inside the rotten walls. On seeing me, she would catch me with the hooks of her eyes and start jabbering about receptions with ambassadors and stuff like that. She was eager to tell everybody the stories of her wild past and croon moldy tunes. No one really stopped to listen, except maybe me. She somehow paralyzed me. The house was overgrown with ivy, and if at places the falling plaster wasn’t visible, that was because the green leaves crept like a skin disease all over the walls and hung in garlands down the façade. Around the old lady’s window they wound a sort of a lifelong wreath.

The violin lessons lasted until my high-school graduation, so I witnessed the slow disintegration of the old woman. Come to think of it now, I wasn’t quite sure of her age. White locks of hair dangled over her tight skin and everything blended in the common grey background of filth. Her stories gradually fell into pieces which got jumbled up, forming strange new combinations, like centaurs, mermaids or fauns.  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Kristin Dimitrova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 Preview Video

Our assistant editor, Logan, again helps us to introduce the new issue of Absinthe. Absinthe 17 is a our special issue focused on Bulgaria and features great poetry and prose from seventeen Bulgarian writers.

Learn more by watching the preview video below or at YouTube here:

Absinthe 17 preview: Georgi Gospodinov

© Dobrin Kashavelov

This is the second in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a brief excerpt from Georgi Gospodinov's novel Physics of Sorrow.

from Physics of Sorrow, translated by Angela Rodel

Szervusz, kenyér, bor, víz, köszönöm, szép, isten veled . . .

I will never forget that strange rosary of words. My grandfather strung them out on the long winter evenings we spent together during my childhood vacations. Hello, bread, wine, water, thank you, beautiful, farewell ... Immediately following my grandmother’s quick and semi-conspiratorially whispered prayer would come his szervusz, kenyér, bor ...

He always said that he used to be able to speak Hungarian for hours, but now in his old age all he had left was this handful of words. His trophy from the front. My grandfather’s seven Hungarian words, which he guarded like silver spoons. My grandmother was certainly jealous of them. Because why would a soldier need to know the word for “beautiful”? And she simply could not accept calling “bread” by such a strange and distorted name. God Almighty, Blessed Virgin, what an ugly word! Those folks have committed a terrible sin. How can you call “bread” kenyér, she fumed, in dead seriousness.

Bread is bread.

Water is water.

Without having read Plato, she shared his idea of the innate correctness of names. Names were correct by nature, never mind that this nature always turned out to be precisely the Bulgarian one.

My grandma never failed to mention that the other soldiers from the village had brought real trophies home from the front, this one a watch, that one a pot, yet another a full set of silver spoons and forks. Stolen, added my grandfather, and they had never even taken them out to eat with, I know their type.

But my grandmother and Hungary were not at all on friendly terms,between them that spirit of understanding and cooperation as it was called in the newspapers back then just didn’t work out. Quite a while later I came to understand the reason for this tension.

I found it strange that my grandfather didn’t like to talk about the war. Or at least he didn’t talk about the things I expected to hear and had seen in movies, the constant battles, artillery fire, kurrr-kur-kurrr (all our toys were machine guns and pistols). I clearly remember asking him how many fascists he had killed and bloodthirstily awaited the tally. Even though I already knew that he couldn’t chalk up a single kill to his name. Not one. And to tell you the truth, I was a bit ashamed of him. Dimo’s grandfather from the other neighborhood had shot 38, most pointblank, and had stabbed another 20 in the gut with his bayonet. Dimo took a step forward, thrust the invisible bayonet a foot into my stomach and twisted it. I think I gave him a good scare when I dropped to the ground pale and started throwing up. It’s awful getting stabbed in the stomach with a bayonet. I barely survived.   READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

Learn more about Georgi Gospodinov at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe 17 preview: Virginia Zaharieva

This is the first in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a brief excerpt from Virginia Zaharieva's novel Nine Rabbits.

from Nine Rabbits, translated by Angela Rodel

Tomorrow my husband turns forty. What can I give him when he already has everything? I’ll give him myself.

I go and buy a black corset with garters, stockings and the most whorish pair of red high heels in order to erotically jumpstart our snoozing seven-year-old married life. That evening we go to another birthday party at the luxurious home of a famous poetess and critic whom the literary moguls hover around. I’ve put on the corset, I’m not wearing panties under my luxuriant skirts and while we discuss the problems of hermeneutics and the third phenomenological reduction to maintain erotic tension I discreetly masturbate on the armrest of a chair that the director of the Institute for Contemporary Art has nestled into…. READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17!


Nine Rabbits will be published by Istros Books in 2012.

Read more about Virginia Zaharieva at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Absinthe #17: Spotlight on Bulgaria is coming soon!

Absinthe #17 is coming soon and features the Bulgarian writers Georgi Gospodinov, Milen Ruskov, Emilia Dvoryanova, Vladislav Todorov, Krassimir Damianov, Kristin Dimitrova, Virginia Zaharieva, Vladimir Zarev, Yanitza Radeva, Ivan Dimitrov, Theodora Dimova, Zdravka Evtimova, Dimiter Kenarov, Maria Doneva, Niki Boikov, Stefan Ivanov, along with an 8-page portfolio of art by Stela Vasileva and Pravdoliub Ivanov, an essay on translation by Hristina Keranova, and reviews of recent Bulgarian films and books.

This is going to be a great issue and you can preorder it now at a discount here.