The Shipka Pass and Memorial Church
There are, however, a number of literary works that portray Bulgaria and its people with a West European or American sensibility. Noah Gordon's The Physician is set along the Danube and depicts life in medieval Bulgarian towns. The Communist takeover of the country provides the background for Eric Ambler's Judgment on Deltchev and Bulgaria was part of the setting for the same author's A Coffin for Dimitrios. Communist Bulgaria, thinly disguised, was a series of hilarious disasters for a visiting English scholar in Malcolm Bradbury's Rates of Exchange, and in Bech: a Book John Updike gave a humorous, fictionalized account of his meeting with the poetess Elizavieta Bagriana in Sofia. In a more somber tone Julian Barnes has written a novel based on the trial of Todor Zhivkov, The Porcupine. Journalist Robert Littell, a frequent visitor to Bulgaria, wrote The October Circle a roman à clef featuring the handful of dissidents that used to gather in the dingy Hotel Balkan, now refurbished as the Balkan Sheraton.
Finally, the two collections of stories by Lawrence Durell, Stiff Upper Lip and Esprit de Corps, describing "life among the dips" in the 1950s should be required reading for all personnel headed for a tour of duty in the Balkans.
The Shipka Pass and Memorial Church
