East of the West
Trade Paperback
Prepare to discover a fascinating country; a land buffeted for centuries by power-struggles and revolts, lorded over by Turks, carved up by its neighbours, and subsumed into the Soviet Union. Yet also a land of proud and resilient people, of crawfish hunters and bagpipe makers, shepherds and gypsies, in which daily life goes on. So meet the teenager who swims by night across a border river to steal a kiss from his girlfriend, the ageing man who finds a cachet of loveletters his wife has kept for sixty years, and the post-Communist girl, an avowed thief with a heart of gold.
Here are Miroslav Penkov's beguiling, surprising and moving visions of his home country, Bulgaria: stories of people who mourn the way things were and long for what will never be, who wrestle with the weight of history, the debt to the family and the pangs of exile. And here is a remarkable new writer, who combines an eye for the absurd with great empathy to give a fresh and inspiring insight into our common humanity.Buy now!
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- ISBN: 9781444733730
- Author: Miroslav Penkov
- Pub date: 10.04.12
- RRP: $31.99
- Format: Paperback / softback
Author
Miroslav Penkov
Miroslav Penkov was born in Bulgaria and lived there, in the capital city of Sofia, until he graduated from First English Language High school. In 2001, at the age of eighteen, Miroslav went to the University of Arkansas where he completed a bachelor's degree in Psychology, followed by an MFA in Creative Writing. In 2008 The Southern Review awarded his story "Buying Lenin" the 2007 Eudora Welty Prize in fiction. A month later Salman Rushdie and Heidi Pitlor chose the story to appear in the 2008 Best American Short Stories. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas and a fiction editor of the American Literary Review.
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