When I met her at the café in the Red House, my friend’s face was tight with tension. She greeted me a bit nervously, then continued discussing with my other close friend the details of hosting the seminar, which, as it turned out, had been relocated from the university to here.…

I begin this text with the relatively clear awareness that in writing it, I am committing a sort of ultimate version of that original philosophical sin – contradictio in adjecto, a contradiction in terms. Eliteness, as I feel it – and as I will try to present it below – consists…

The trembling light of the tallow candle – a useful and necessary object, if foul-smelling – mixed with the flicker of the hearth, so that the shadows of the three men, seated on low three-legged stools and taking turns sipping from a bowl of thick bean stew, for which Hristo…

It begins in a drowsy provincial town — Prespan, somewhere deep in 1980s Bulgaria — at a moment when history quietly forgets its manners. The so-called “Revival Process” is in full swing, and neighbour turns against neighbour in a fog of fear, confusion, and officially…