Culture

Maya Ivanova explores how Zdravka Evtimova’s "Asylum for Men and Dogs" turns violence and inequality into a story of refusing to bow down.

Maya Ivanova reviews Narine Abgaryan’s "To Go On Living", revealing the human cost of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War beyond headlines and statistics.

Maya Ivanova reviews Anait Grigoryan’s “The Village on the Oredezh River” as a powerful portrayal of social breakdown in provincial Russia during the 1990s.

Maya Ivanova reviews “Echelon to Samarkand” Guzel Yakhina as a powerful novel that brings renewed attention to the Volga famine, a long-silenced catastrophe that devastated countless Tatar families.

Maya Ivanova shows how Anna Lazarova’s poetry reflects the loneliness and changing family life of post-1989 Bulgaria.

Diego Benning Wang reviews "Bride and Groom" by Alisa Ganieva - a book about marriage, corruption, radicalism, and constrained freedom in urban Dagestan.

Maya Ivanova explores how Zdravka Evtimova’s “Blood of a Mole” uses compassion and dark humour to reveal the hidden realities of contemporary Bulgaria.

Flavia Stähli reviews "The Ministry of Pain" by Dubravka Ugrešić - a book about memory, nostalgia, trauma, and identity after Yugoslavia’s collapse.

Maya Ivanova examines how Rene Karabash's “She Who Remains” transforms the story of an Albanian sworn virgin into a powerful reflection on patriarchy, identity, queer experience and the [...]

Maya Ivanova reviews Banine’s "Days in the Caucasus", a book about the vanished world of oil-boom Baku before Soviet rule.