Issue 63-64

"I am not more interested in tolerance than anyone else. I was just surprised to find that, in Bulgaria, there is such ethnic, linguistic and religious tolerance; a diversity without which Bulgarians would not have survived the last 800 years. I mean that this somehow even predates Ottoman rule, that something in the Bulgarian DNA made it possible for different people to live together. I know Katunitsa exists, and not only Katunitsa; I know what some people think.

An increasing number of economists, as well as ordinary citizens, view the economic policies of Boyko Borisov's establishment as being, at the very least, "inconsistent." They claim that they are designed to keep the state coffers in order, while impoverishing the middle class and crushing whatever small and medium-sized businesses still survive the ongoing crisis.

Back then I was broke, even broker than usual. Completely broke. This situation landed me straight behind the reception desk of a crappy hotel in the run-down part of downtown – where Sofia's buildings had shown enviable determination and had thumbed their noses at the bombs. Where Churchill said he planned to plant potatoes, I started working (relatively speaking) as an administrator. It was only for a month's rent's time, that reassured me, as did the word "administrator." The hotel wasn't from the time of the air-raids, but everyone thought it was. It was easy to get confused.

A biographical novel of Lev Tolstoy

Chapter 1

The engine shed in Yasenki was a low, gray building made of slatboard next to the rail line. A set of tracks emerged from beneath the door and angled onto the main set that led north. The door was slightly ajar. Several lines of footprints in the snow led across the tracks and to the doorway. Lev tied off his horse and followed the prints to the open doorway.

When you travel through Bulgaria you will most likely be stunned by the sheer number of ugly "heroic" monuments dotting the countryside. They all depict more or less one and the same thing: Soviet soldiers holding submachine guns, local peasants wearing raincoats and flat caps, busty women usually carrying a bunch of wheat stables. Stars, hammers and sickles – the symbols of Communism – are omnipresent, and so are plaques celebrating local partizani, or Second World War Communist resistance fighters.

The reasons why a series of Bulgarian post-Communist governments decided to ruin the railways system are many and varied, but come down to the usual mixture of corruption, shortsightedness and the by now proverbial lack of interest in the public good.

The arsonist, or arsonists, usually choose mid-range models, often third- or fourth-hand vehicles that have no insurance. They usually operate in car parks in housing estates such as Lyulin, Mladost and Druzhba. In one such case, a traffic policeman was right next to a car being set on fire. The policeman somehow failed to do anything to stop the incident, not could he identify or arrest the arsonist.

I would be interested in hearing your opinion. I think that some feedback (in this case from a reader of a book published by yourselves) makes sense, and it is this idea that prompted me to contact you.