Fran Lewis Interviews Me on Blog Talk Radio

"These stories are fantastic. If you've never been to Bulgaria, you'll want to get on a plane right now."

Listen to the full interview here.

"I appreciate that many of the stories are interlinked"

Excellent. Some stories are funny, but even those are touched with poignancy. Some are heartbreaking. All are enlightening, fascinating, well worth reading. I do highly recommend this book and just wish I'd been able to do so when it was first released.

Of course it's not too late. Go get it now!

I appreciate that many of the stories are interlinked, referencing towns, events, and even characters from others. But even with those additional clues I'm not sure I understood the author's intent in all the stories.

For example, I wonder about the Roma mother, and whether she'll actually ever get around to helping her daughter to find a way to a better life. The ending seems intentionally ambiguous....

The story about brothers definitely made an impact on me. The ending, gosh. But before that, I loved this bit: "I lived in his shadow for years, never meeting his expectations. Anton always looked down at me, I thought. This bothered me greatly, more now than before." What an intelligent, and valuable, insight, that children can overlook slights & other hardships, but adults can remember them with pain. Think about that.

A character says: "Today, antisemitism is virtually absent in the country, and most Bulgarians have a very favorable opinion of Israel." I wonder if that's still true, as the far-right takes over many European offices, and as the war expands past Gaza on its first anniversary.

I hope to share this marvelous book with some of the members of my book club.

Review posted on Goodreads

Author Interview - Hasty Book List

Many authors have inspired me over the years. During high school, I eagerly read every novel and short story written by Kurt Vonnegut. My favorites were "Cat's Cradle" and "The Sirens of Titan". My high school thesis was devoted to Vonnegut and I remember writing to his publicist and receiving an autographed copy of "Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons" - his non-fiction collection of essays.

Next, I became a big fan of John Irving, especially enjoying his novels "The World According to Garp" and "The Hotel New Hampshire", but also his earlier work, "Setting Free the Bears" and "The Water-Method Man". As an aspiring author the thing I most admired about John Irving was his statement that he wrote the ending first, and then he created the plot for his novel, a story that would reach that concluding line. When I write, I too envision where the plot will take me in the end, and then my creative process brings me there eventually.

And one other author I must mention – Haruki Murakami. I'm not sure when I started reading his novels and short stories, but certainly "Norwegian Wood" was one of the first. I once made myself a list of seven reasons why I enjoyed reading Murakami. Among the reasons were that the settings in Murakami's stories are realistic, yet anything can happen. At one point, the bookshelf in my home included every Murakami book translated into English, but in subsequent years, my collection was built with digital copies as well.

Read the rest of the interview on Hasty Book Links.

Review in 'New Eastern Europe' magazine

"It is rare to find books on Bulgarian history in the English language – it is even more uncommon to come across works of fiction with a historical twist which are set in Bulgaria. Ellis Shuman’s Rakiya: Stories of Bulgaria shines a light on the idiosyncrasies of Bulgarian life and rich historical heritage while exposing angles on Bulgarian mentality of which the country’s citizens are often oblivious."

Read the full review by Radosveta Vassilevaon the New Eastern Europe website.

New Eastern Europe is the exclusive bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs published by the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe in Wrocław, a Polish-based NGO think tank.