Summer in the Balkans: Laughter and Tears After Communism is a book about people captured in the reflections of a Fulbright scholar while in Bulgaria during the summer of 1992.
Randal Baker quickly finds himself “in the soup,” as Bulgarians would say, when he arrives to find his main contact fired and his scheduled classes canceled. But he also finds himself surrounded by typically friendly and generous Bulgarian colleagues, who adopt him and his wife for the duration of his stay.
Those who know Bulgaria will find here a fine collection of characters and situations common in the country. Newcomers will discover that there is logic to how Bulgarian society functions, even if it is difficult for foreigners to understand.
[…] Crampton’s broadly academic Concise History of Bulgaria to Randall Baker’s personal memoir, Summer in the Balkans: Laughter and Tears after Communism. This month we add our first communist era selection to the […]