contemporary Bulgarian prose

The article examines generically diverse post-1989 Bulgarian texts based on crime stories. It compares representations of criminality in the literature of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and in the fiction of local authors from the post-communist era. The focus is on how new narratives about criminals and detectives shape assessments about the present, the legacies of the totalitarian era, and the presence (or absence) of justice within Bulgaria’s contemporary socio-political reality.

By focusing on the communicative strategy of G. Gospodinov’s “Time Shelter”, the paper aims to identify some of the reasons for the success of the novel in a non-Bulgarian environment. The focus is also on the image of Bulgaria that “Time Shelter” builds; in relation to this image, the paper considers concepts such as “pamphlet” and “feuilleton” from a functional perspective.