En egen bildningsresa påbörjad: Bulgarien

Ett slitet gammalt vykort som jag hittade avbildat på nätet- en mycket känt gisslandrama på sin tid- nu bortglömt.

"The Miss Stone Affair was the kidnapping of American Protestant missionary Ellen Maria Stone and her pregnant friend Katerina Stefanova–Tsilka by an IMORO detachment on 21 August 1901. The two women were kidnapped somewhere between Bansko and Gorna Dzhumaya, then towns in the Ottoman Empire. Widely covered by the media at the time, the event has been often dubbed "America's first modern hostage crisis".

Tresa Carpenter har skrivit en bok om händelsen (2003). Handlingen utspelar sig i det som idag är Bulgarien. Jag tror att det kan vara intressant läsning. Bokrekommendationen hittade jag i Kapka Kassabovas "Street Without a Name".

"My Odyssey" är Stephane Groueffs självbiografi.

Boris III

Kassabova rekommenderar också Stephane Groueffs "Crown of Thorns: the Reign of King Boris III of Bulgaria." Stephane Groueff (1922-2006) var reporter på Paris-Match under många år.

"My destiny was to have an unusually diverse and colorful life, with many rewards, professional and personal. My odyssey has also its sad stages, but as a whole it is a lucky and happy one."

Alexenia Dimitrova

En annan bok som sägs vara läsvärd är "The Iron Fist" av Alexenia Dimitrova (2005)

"During the Soviet era, Bulgaria’s secret police was a mirror image of the KGB. Family members spied on each other, as did friends; private mail or telephone conversations did not exist. Many notorious "dissidents" were stooges of the secret police. People disappeared from shop queues and church doorsteps or were spirited away in the early hours of the morning from their homes. Some never returned, others returned as shadows of their former selves… broken, brainwashed, crippled.
Through interviews and extant archives, international journalist Alexenia Dimitrova documents a brutal truth that is rapidly being whitewashed over"

(Nu var jag lat och hämtade texten från Amazon.com). Mischa Glennys "The Balkans" har jag redan i min bokhylla- och den ska jag titta lite mera i. Jag noterar att Kapka Kassabova speciellt framhåller Claudio Magris bok "Donau" som lämplig för att lära sig mera om både Bulgarien och balkantrakten i övrigt.