The eight pieces in this collection come together like a ball of tiny mirrors, reflecting and illuminating hidden corners of the battered history of a country.Įast of the West is subtitled “A country in stories,” and that description is more accurate than seems possible. But while it covers the defeat of the Ottomans in the late-19 th Century, along with the rise of Communism, the fall of Communism, and the rise of the European Union, these history lessons are wound seamlessly into Penkov’s intensely lovely, and intensely sad stories.
If I were to list here the number of different things that Miroslav Penkov’s East of the West taught me about Bulgaria, you might mistakenly think this debut collection of short stories was an academic historical text.
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