And here is a remarkable new writer, who combines an eye for the absurd with great empathy to give a fresh and inspiring insight into our common humanity. Reflecting and illuminating the battered history of Bulgaria, this collection of short stories. Here are Miroslav Penkov's beguiling, surprising and moving visions of his home country, Bulgaria: stories of people who mourn the way things were and long for what will never be, who wrestle with the weight of history, the debt to the family and the pangs of exile. His debut collection, East of the West, was published in over a dozen countries.

So meet the teenager who swims by night across a border river to steal a kiss from his girlfriend, the ageing man who finds a cachet of loveletters his wife has kept for sixty years, and the post-Communist girl, an avowed thief with a heart of gold. Henry Prize Stories 2012, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013. He is the author of East of the West: A Country in Stories (2011), the title story of which. Yet also a land of proud and resilient people, of crawfish hunters and bagpipe makers, shepherds and gypsies, in which daily life goes on. Miroslav Penkov was born in 1982 and raised in Bulgaria. In EAST OF THE WEST, Penkov writes with great empathy of centuries of tumult his characters mourn the way things were and long for things that will never be. Prepare to discover a fascinating country a land buffeted for centuries by power-struggles and revolts, lorded over by Turks, carved up by its neighbours, and subsumed into the Soviet Union. These are Miroslav Penkov's strange, unexpectedly moving visions of his home country, Bulgaria, and they are the stories that make up his charming, deeply felt debut collection.

East of the west by miroslav penkov