Writing in Absentia: Nostalgia and Anti-nostalgia in the essays of Georgi Markov
Writing in Absentia: Nostalgia and Anti-nostalgia in the essays of Georgi Markov

Summary/Abstract: Between 1975 and his assassination in 1978, the Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov wrote more than 130 radio reports about life in Bulgaria. These, however, are not news reports in the conventional sense. They are a form of autobiographical reportage and, as such, don’t focus so much on contemporary events in Bulgaria, as on Markov’s own experiences and encounters in the homeland he eventually found it necessary to leave in 1969. Thanks to the negative image they construct of Bulgaria during the 1950s and 1960s, these reports – or, perhaps more accurately, radio essays – appear to represent a wholly anti-nostalgic form of reportage and memoir in line with the conventions of what we might call dissident narrative. At the same time, however, they exist on a more complex, more nuanced emotional terrain and, in recognising this, this paper argues that Markov’s work in these essays should more rightly, more accurately be regarded as belonging to the literature of exile rather than as simple polemic.

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