Fiction

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Four Minutes

Nataliya Deleva

Four Minutes explores the lives of people who exist on the margins of society in post-communist Bulgaria, focusing on loneliness, trauma, and the struggle to be seen and understood. At its centre is Leah, a woman who grew up in an orphanage marked by neglect and abuse. Now in her thirties, she continues to grapple with the wounds of her childhood while trying to build a meaningful life. When she volunteers at an orphanage, she forms a bond with Dara, a nine-year-old girl who has stopped speaking following her father’s murder. Leah hopes to adopt her, but prejudice and bureaucracy stand in her way. Interwoven with Leah’s story are nine shorter portraits of other marginalised people, including Roma women and children, refugees, and survivors of abuse. Each section is designed to be read in approximately four minutes, reflecting the idea that a brief moment of genuine attention can foster empathy. Through these interconnected stories, Nataliya Deleva examines abandonment, exclusion, and the human need for connection, asking what it takes to truly see another person.

Stork Mountain

Miroslav Penkov

Stork Mountain follows a young Bulgarian-American man who returns to his ancestral village in Bulgaria after the disappearance of his grandfather, a former communist official. Hoping to uncover the truth about his family’s past, he becomes immersed in the history and traditions of a rural community near the Turkish border, where generations have lived through political upheaval, shifting national identities, and religious tensions. As he investigates his grandfather’s life, the narrator encounters stories of forbidden love, ancient rituals, and the complicated legacy of Bulgaria’s communist era. The village’s inhabitants preserve memories and customs that seem increasingly distant from the modern world, while the narrator struggles to reconcile his American upbringing with the homeland he has inherited through family history. Miroslav Penkov blends folklore, historical fiction, and contemporary storytelling to explore belonging, migration, and the ways personal identity is shaped by collective memory. The novel reveals how the past continues to influence the present, even when its stories have been forgotten, distorted, or deliberately concealed.