Old Stories, Old Desires I do not remember when I first began to wish that the mirror would answer. The impulse is so old that it is rarely experienced as a conscious desire — more as something inherited, a reflex of the imagination that we all acquire as we grow up and become…

My father – my favourite Bulgarian – passed away a few months ago, standing. In this way, he gave his sons the last – and perhaps most important – example of his life, but that’s not what I want to speak about here. Bai Mitko Enev died while trying to climb the steps at the top…

“No,” said the Girl, and there was a familiar note in her voice. Painfully familiar. “No parking!” “Keep off the grass!” “Occupied!” “Oh, come on,” thought the Boy – who by now wasn’t really a boy anymore, but a short-cropped, greying little man. “It was ‘no’ the other day, too,…

Chapter one: Deadlock again Rain clouds, dark and puffed-up like turkeys, had been threatening to unleash their wrath on the dreary town all day, but so far had remained all threat and no action, as if to annoy everyone even more. Anne-Firecurl, herself gloomier than even the…