The divergent generational views of the communist era are more fully seen in “Buying Lenin,” which seems to have at least a touch of autobiography to it. “The Night Generation,” meanwhile, involves a family proud of its Turkish ethnicity but caught up in the Communist government’s late 1984 directive forcing citizens of Turkish heritage to adopt Bulgarian names. Set in part in the 1970s, the story tells of a romance between a boy and a girl on opposite sides of the river.

They used to be one one village but following the Balkan Wars and World War I, the hamlet on the west side of the river is in Serbia and the one on the east is in Bulgaria. The title story is set in two hamlets on the opposite banks of a river. What role does history play in Bulgarian society? The first story, “Makedonija,” opens with: “I was born just 20 years after we got rid of the Turks.” It proceeds to recount the man’s discovery of love letters his wife received in 1905 from a soldier fighting to free Macedonia from Turkish rule. At least here, the history of Ottoman rule, the longstanding issues of the Balkan states, and the installation and fall of Communism remain relevant. They reflect the mix that is part of Bulgaria, a country that may long for the West but retains pride in its Eastern roots. The eight stories tell of life in and the people of Bulgaria in a guileless, congenial fashion. As the subtitle indicates, Pavlov’s debut collection of short stories takes us inside his native Bulgaria. Take for example Miroslav Penkov’s East of the West: A Country in Stories. Nonfiction certainly holds no exclusive claim to teaching readers about another country or its people.

East of the West by Miroslav Penkov