The Global Literature in Libraries Initiative is hosting Bulgarian Literature Month. For the last couple of years, I've been sporadically reading novels and poetry from a few Bulgarian writers and blogging about it here, so Bulgarian Literature Month is always a good time for me, an opportunity to discover new books and authors.
Writer, economist, and publisher Thomas Hübner (also author of the blog mytwostotinki) acts as master of ceremonies for the online portion of Bulgarian Literature Month. He generously invited me to write about Georgi Gospodinov's first novel, Natural Novel. That essay is right here. A host of other book bloggers have also been invited to write essays about Bulgarian literature, so read those posts as well; they'll be appearing on the GLLI website over the course of June.
Mr Hübner shipped a copy of Kerana Angelova's short-but-impressive novel Elada Pinyo and Time to me, all the way to Seattle from Moldova, and I read that book last week. I hope I find time to write a bit about it here. It's got the kind of folktale/unrealism I like in a lot of modern European literature, sort of Günter Grass meets Brothers Grimm, maybe with Angela Carter knocking at the door. Good stuff.