Bulgaria

Four Minutes by Nataliya Deleva, translated by Izidora Angel. I read an edition published in 2021 by FaberBooks

Leah, an orphan who grew up in a children’s home, is slowly processing and confronting what’s happened to her.

"All my mother bestowed me with, all I have to remember her by, is a faded, cream-yellow blanket. It's what she swaddled me in on our first and last day together, and sometimes I imagine how she clung to the sleeping, unsuspecting, pint-sized newborn before giving her up in this blanket soaked with her tears."

I enjoyed the snippets of other experiences that punctuated this novel, giving a broader picture of Bulgaria and the world beyond it. A recipe for Agnes Cake, description of an exhibition, use of Google Maps and like a few other books from other countries the protagonist of this novel is a lesbian, an interesting contrast-

"We avoided gay clubs because we felt they were exclusionary."