Issue 61-62

Many years ago, in the salad days of Bulgaria's English Magazine, we brought out a portfolio of at times exuberantly preposterous signs thought up by Communist Party apparatchiks and manufactured by state-employed artisans. Bulgaria's rulers from 1944 to 1989 surmised that they needed to inform citizens what to do in public toilets, in parks, in their gardens and on the staircases leading to their prefabricated blocks of flats. The deeper purpose was to show the Party's omniscience in all areas of life, as well as its Catch-22 type of vigilance in case anyone strayed.

I'm almost finished delivering Literary Newspaper. After stopping off at the Youth Theater, I take a detour through the Ladies' Market, it's dusk, all sorts of shady characters are coming out, hawking stuff on tarps, you can even buy yourself a Latin American dictionary for five bucks. I stroll through the darkening market, the vendors are packing up their stalls, others are letting down the shutters, I spot a little fish stand and head over to it.

On the eve of the millennium a snowstorm forces a German flying to Istanbul to stop in Sofia. Wishing to reach the Bosporus as quickly as possible, he decides to take the train instead. It is only a matter of time before he falls into the surreal Bulgarian reality, and becomes a part of it himself.

Blueberry Hill (2002) is a film by Aleksandar Morfov, an emblematic Bulgarian theatre director who mostly lives and works abroad. So is Blueberry Hill's star. Samuel "Sancho" Finzi has been living in Berlin, where he went to study acting, since 1989.

Theoretically, data produced by an EU government, with the possible exception of Greece, should be trusted. At the same time, the Bulgarians have this joke about the three levels of lies. There is a small lie, there is a big lie, and then there is statistics...

So, how correct is the data produced by the 2011 census?

A recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, she has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, as well as residencies at Yaddo and the Hermitage. She lives in Massachusetts with her two children and is currently at work on her second novel.

They stepped out of the door and the wind howled around them with a sound like that of a train going past. Off the porch, to the west, the surf ran in a wide torrent, awash with wreckage from the houses on the dunes.

I was born on 20 July 1930 in Pleven and I am a contemporary to these events. I had a friend, Edi; we went to school together. In 1943-1944 some interned Jews from Sofia lived in our house.

Living in Bulgaria 1943