In East of the West, Bulgarian-born writer Miroslav Penkov brings together eight interconnected stories about borders, political identities and historical loyalties that have repeatedly shifted.

Moving between Bulgaria and the United States, and across generations marked by communism, migration and the uneasy aftermath of the Cold War, Penkov's characters inhabit a world in which intimate relationships are shaped by larger historical divisions. We have lovers separated by borders, families negotiating the contradictions of political allegiance, and emigrants discovering that geographical distance does not necessarily produce emotional separation.

Penkov's prose moves between tenderness, absurdity and occasionally startling violence, drawing on Bulgarian folklore, family mythology and the particular humour of people accustomed to history behaving rather badly. Very compelling in its attention to the uneven persistence of the past within ordinary lives.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011. First edition, first printing. Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket. Good to very good condition, with light shelf wear and minor marking to dust jacket.