Alek Popov is a leading figure on Bulgaria’s contemporary literature scene. Having written numerous award-winning short stories and scripts, which have been translated into over a dozen languages, Mission London is his first novel. In a style “something like Pulp Fiction,” it tackles the behaviour of Bulgaria’s new elite on the eve of accession.

The action is set in an Eastern European embassy in London. Alek himself worked in the Bulgarian embassy in London in 1997-98. “The background of the book is very real for this reason. I wasn’t intending to write this book actually, but over time the material started accumulating and I felt I must write something about it. There was too much precious material to be lost. It’s the small details that I like, they are completely real.”

As for the characters, “Some of the main characters have something to do with real people, but in the end it turned out that they evolved into archetypes of characters from the Transition.” The “Transition”, the time after the fall of Communism, was a period of change from the old Socialist ways to democracy. This brought with it struggles for a new identity.

“The main strands of the plot chart the struggle for representation and for a new image of both the elite and the ordinary citizen. It looks at how ordinary people from Eastern Europe are trying to adapt to the West and be part of a greater Europe, a process which involves the disruption of many illusions.”

“On the other side, it is about perceptions the West has about itself and about Eastern Europe.” Alek wants to invert the balance in which it was traditionally the West that “imagined” or “colonised” other cultures by writing about them from a Western standpoint. “This book is also an attempt to colonise the West through the view of the Eastern European order.”

What is it about?

When Varadin Dimitroff, the Bulgarian ambassador, arrives at his new posting in London he finds the embassy in disarray. Not only are there signs of all night parties, the staff have done nothing towards organising a concert planned to celebrate Bulgaria’s accession to the EU.

Under pressure from the Prime Minister’s wife, Varadin’s career prospects rest on his ensuring the Queen attends the concert. With the date fast approaching, Dimitroff enlists the help of “Famous Connections”, a shady PR agency that promises him direct access to Britain’s social elite. But in his haste, he fails to get some crucial information on the agency. Namely, that it deals in lookalike strip programs. By the time the truth comes to light, it is too late. A huge scandal looms on the horizon…

To complicate matters further, Varadin falls in love with gorgeous Bulgarian student Kati, cleaner in the embassy by day, stripper by night, unaware that she is working for “Famous Connections” as a Princess Diana lookalike.

The night of the concert arrives, and the strands of the narrative come together, resulting in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, reflecting the illusions and delusions of post-Communist society.

Mission London (2001), Zvezdan Press

In his latest novel published into English, The Black Box, Popov devotes his comic energy to two Bulgarian brothers. In a device reminiscent of Changing Places, an early novel by the British comic writer David Lodge, one brother is a successful financier in New York, the other an impoverished publisher from the old country. Popov shares Lodge’s taste for comic confusion among generally well-meaning characters.

In the Bulgarian hinterlands, Ned the financial consultant from Manhattan tries to find out what has happened to US funds sunk into the remains of Bulgarian heavy industry. Meanwhile, back in New York, his cash-strapped brother Angel finds a job walking dogs in Central Park. Needless to say, with his taste for farce and complication, Popov soon has Angel inveigled into frenetic comic set-ups where dog eat dog becomes a distinct literal possibility.

This doggy strand of the US plot temporarily gives way to Angel’s quest to discover what actually happened to his father, a Professor in Chatanooga during the Communist era, whose ashes were sent home to Sofia in the black box of the title.

Again, as in his first novel, Popov investigates culture clash. Black Box wrestles with the parochial view that there are two places in the world: Bulgaria, and everywhere else. In this novel everywhere else is represented by contemporary America, and Popov gets plenty of self deferential comic mileage from defining Bulgarians into two distinct types.

The SBA’s are Successful Bulgarians Abroad. The NSAB’s are the Non-Successful Arses stuck in Bulgaria, and the satirical bite of the first part of the book comes from a Bulgarian abroad who is far from the success everyone at home ought to think he is.

Popov is a satirist a heart, and it turns out that success in the new capitalist world order is always a compromise. Over in Europe, Ned’s journey into the wasted industrial heartlands of old Bulgaria lead him to Kurtz, a rogue investment executive who has gathered around himself a band of loyal followers.

The reference to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – where it is now and what it might mean – is a question mocked throughout the comic misadventures of the novel. Old Europe is the heart of darkness, the destination of the black box containing the ashes of Bulgarian fathers. But there’s also a dark heart to Central Park, where the Dogsters Union control who can walk the capitalist walk, and there is a blackness too that can pervade even a typically provincial US campus.