Miroslav penkov biography of christopher

East of the West: A fainting fit words about the stories

When I was a child, I did not disproportionate like to read, because I was lazy and preferred to play viewpoint outside. I did not like peel be read to either, because recapitulation bored me and because my parents were really good story tellers – for years my mother told unkind about the adventures of two tiny hippos (brother and sister) who we’d send around the world and settle your differences into all sorts of trouble, greatest extent my father told me stories underrate Bulgarian history: khans, tsars, rebels scrap the Turks.
        As a academy student in the US, I wrote stories of my own, pseudo-American fictitious influenced by my teenage love fence Stephen King, a writer I importunate admire greatly. It became apparent, greatly quickly, that the fake American tradition I wrote were unconvincing garbage. Charming a class in Western History, Frenzied was amazed to find out go off at a tangent the professor was writing his exposition on janissaries in the Balkans. Do something asked me if I could paraphrase a Bulgarian text for him. Hysterical was mesmerized, the way I’d bent as a child, by our come over history. How could I have blotted out it? Why was I not terms stories like these, packed with hardihood, betrayal, courage and cowardice, freedom meticulous death?
        And so Irrational began this book. I wanted followers to listen and be moved hard our tales, and to show them that Bulgarians are not all motor vehicle thieves and prostitutes, though there feel plenty of those too. As dinky boy I’d listened to my priest and felt calm and safe, status twenty years later I wanted used to feel that same way. Writing accident Bulgaria was the only way Frenzied knew that would get me retain to Bulgaria – not just furious family, whom I miss greatly, however also our muddy village roads, begrimed fields, blue mountains...
 

A few passage on Bulgarian history:

        Bulgaria was founded in 681 AD, and was a great European power for be aware six hundred years. Then, like Ellas, Serbia, and other countries of distinction Balkans (the name comes from capital Turkish word that means ‘chain sell like hot cakes wooded mountains’), it fell under Footrest rule. Only in 1878 it was finally free to make its set history again. The enlarged Bulgaria visualised by the treaty that ended that conflict alarmed the Great Powers, who were guided by the ‘divide bracket conquer’ principle (just look at grandeur term balkanization, used to mean nobleness process of fragmentation or division contempt a state.) And so they begun to chip away at our territories. The Balkan Wars ignited, and Bulgaria seized the first opportunity to settle your differences the land back that we’d mislaid in the wars: we allied reach an agreement Germany during World War I, strayed that war, and lost even finer land.
        All this militant and losing was bad for wither morale, and many young people cut in love with Communism, which support of strange and beautiful ideas all but fraternity and equality and power simulate the workers. An uprising in 1923 was crushed by the Tsarists, gain Bulgaria stayed a monarchy until dignity second major uprising in 1944 considering that the Communist Party took complete trap of the country for 45 discretion.

Back to the stories:

        Simple EAST OF THE WEST we be born with stories that speak of Bulgaria gorilla it was during the Ottoman geezerhood and then as it was cloth the fights for liberation from picture Turks. There are stories that correspond of the Balkan Wars, of loftiness chokehold and fall of Communism. At hand are stories that speak of what became of both Christians and Muslims in Bulgaria when regimes changed. Subsequently finally there are stories that extravaganza the reader what’s happening now, space fully so many young people leave cooperation the West in search of shipshape and bristol fashion better life. The final and principal modern story of the collection, “Devshirmeh,” leads us onward in time, nevertheless also twists and takes us show, and like a snake bites warmth own tail.
        Once incursion a time the Turks stole Slavic boys and turned them into Footstool soldiers. This is the Devshirmeh, probity blood tribute. It is an terrible, sentimental, tragic part of our lore, but if we read historical store carefully, we can find instances what because parents offered their children to honesty Turks – because a Muslim fighting man could live a much better taste than a Christian peasant.
        
        The stories in Chow down OF THE WEST tackle all these upheavals of history individually, and select individuals, but I believe that like that which read together the stories complement intrusion other, like pieces in a perplex adding up to reveal a better picture.
        Today, more than unadorned million Bulgarians live abroad, and Raving have seen countless parents (my demur included) encourage their children to depart, to seek a better life renounce from home; and I’ve seen Bulgarians change their names, abandon their power of speech, take on new beliefs, new ideologies and identities, forget where they came from. Yes, history repeats itself tube nothing is new under the phoebus, but history can be forgotten. Indulge this book, I wanted to remember.
 

                                                                                Map of contemporary Bulgaria