Mapped
Time Shelter
Georgi Gospodinov
Gospodinov's Sofia is the Bulgarian heart of a novel about a Europe seduced by its own past. A clinic that rebuilds vanished decades room by room spreads from Switzerland until whole countries vote on which era to move back into. The map holds to the mausoleum-haunted centre of the capital, from the yellow-paved political square out along Vitosha Boulevard.
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Under the Yoke
Ivan Vazov
Bulgaria's national novel, set in the year of the April Uprising of 1876 against Ottoman rule, follows the escaped revolutionary Boycho Ognyanov as he returns to a small town in the Rose Valley below the Balkan Mountains and helps rouse it to a doomed rebellion. Vazov drew his town of Byala Cherkva from his own Sopot: the streets and houses of the town, the school and the monastery, the neighbouring town of Klisura burned in the rising, and the Sredna Gora mountains where the revolt is crushed.
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