I want to be that other man.įor eight years now we’ve lived in this nursing home, a few kilometers away from Sofia, at the foot of the Vitosha Mountains. I want to live again as someone who holds no memory of me. Reborn in a young man’s body and with a young man’s mind. I wish it was not that man but I who’d known Nora, back when she was closer to a beginning than an end. I can’t imagine ever writing the kind of letters a woman would preserve for sixty years. Inside lay a small booklet, a diary in letters. The lid flew to the side and the door of a secret compartment popped loose at the bottom. It was a silly find, one that belongs in romance novels, not in real life and old age. I found his letters to my wife, from long before she knew me, when she was still sixteen. Although I might be jealous of a man who’s sixty years dead.

Last night I pissed my bed and who knows what joy tonight will bring? I am in no way original or new. I call my daughter by my grandson’s name and I remember the day I met my wife much better than yesterday, or today.

I am a walking pain, hips, shoulders, knees and elbows. I was born just twenty years after we got rid of the Turks. If you're looking for a riveting and beautiful collection of stories about a country you may not know much about, this comes with my recommendation. Every story in this collection is tied to Bulgaria, and while there are many similarities from one story to the next, each is also entirely unique.This is a fabulous collection and I do wish I'd gotten around to it sooner if for no other reason than I'd like to have read the author's subsequent novel by now. No story collection hits 100% of the time, and East of the West is not an exception, but it is one that never dips low. East of the West is a wonderful collection full of interesting characters, fascinating stories, and language that is beautiful but never bores. It has remained high on this list ever since, but in the more than eight years that followed, I failed to give it a read. It was sitting on a shelf of newly released fiction at my library, and I added it to my to-read list shortly after. I remember that something about this book caught my attention when it was first released.

East of the west miroslav penkov