New Bulgarian Writing

Bulgarian Novel of the Year Award winner Georgi Tenev writes nineteenth-century Bulgarian revolutionaries into a dystopian twentieth-century setting in “Old Proud Mountain”; a suspicious wife joins her husband on a hunting trip only to find it’s not quite what she expected in Olya Stoyanova’s “What Wolves Dream”; Vlado Trifonov writes of bargirl-barristers and Mafiosi in “The Barrister from Bar Doli”; and in Agop Melkonyan’s “Just the Two,” a boy uncovers the mystery behind his father’s long-standing drinking ritual.
New Palestinian Writing
Rodrigo Hasbún considers W. Somerset Maugham’s assertion that the greatest journey is between two people in “Long Distance.” In “A Map of Jerusalem,” Sousan Hammad explores the intersection of memory, place, and time. Mazen Maarouf’s “Solitary Confinement on the Seventh Floor” is anchored in uprootedness, its images fragile and violent. The issue also features work by Asmaa Alghoul, Najwan Darwish, and Yahya Hassan, plus Nathalie Handal’s interview with Randa Abdel-Fattah about the hybridized nature of her Palestinian cultural identity.