The foreword of the book states that it is “twice
born” – once in English and once in Bulgarian. The reasons for this lay in the
idea of the story itself: it mixes past and present in an inseparable amalgam
of experience. Similarly to the author’s debut work, the novel in question is
deeply nostalgic and seeks to establish the lost connection of family ties.
The novel
opens with a surrealistic sand storm that sets the “time mode” in the story. Resembling
Dali’s idea of time as slippery, the sand storm shuffles the levels of past and
present and makes them interfere, mix and resemble each other. The hero,
constantly referred to as “The American”, returns to his homeland Bulgaria to
look for his grandfather who exiled himself at a village near the Turkish
border. This quest is soon identified not only as a trial for finding a lost
relative, but for finding the lost self too.
Once united, grandfather and grandson exist in a
limbo of imagined, dreamt and true stories – some revived from the past, some
the product of wishful thinking – whose invisible thread runs through the
present and affects it in one way or another. The novel is not nostalgic purely
because it dwells a lot in the past, but mainly because it relies on the magical
and mythical qualities of the past to explain the current tie of problems,
narrow-mindedness, jealousy, envy, greed, love and hatred.
The novel treats old problems in a familiar way. It is
rather too prolonged and a bit implausible at times but the overall impression
is positive. One of the advantages, in my opinion, is the fact that the idealized
figure of the forefather is presented as a human with his weaknesses and
forbidden passions, with his dreams, desires and hopes. The grandfather
character is full-blooded and convincing.
Overall, the attempt to establish an identity by
getting to know the legends surrounding your past is a successful one. Ancient rituals
and practices should be preserved in peoples’ memories and Penkov’s novel “preserves”
the customs of dancing in the fire (нестинарство).
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