The Bulgarian doctor
A novel
IS THERE A TALENT FOR HAPPINESS?
„He felt like something inside him was broken. Forever. His father‘s words took away the air to breathe. Worthless!, it hammered behind his forehead. Worthless!”
It is fascination at first sight when Wantscho and Rose meet: the seemingly exotic „man from the Balkans” and the happy-go-lucky girl who is longing for an adventure in the grey drabness of everyday life in the GDR. And the first years of their marriage in Bulgaria are definitely adventurous, and so is their later flight from the GDR into the West. But Wantscho is a man with two faces: As a psychiatrist he knows how to ease the emotional distress of others but is helplessly at its mercy himself. His family also can’t escape his sorrow. Years later, his daughter Nelli starts searching for traces: Who was this father who seemed like a stranger and yet was so close to her all her life?
Nicki Pawlow, born in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in 1964, is the daughter of a Bulgarian father and a German mother and grew up in Thuringia. In 1977, the family fled to Baden-Württemberg in the West. She studied political science, Slavic philology, and modern history in Munich and, among other things, worked as a political publicist, editor, and screenwriter. Today, Nicki Pawlow works as a writer and lives in Berlin with her husband and their three children. www.nickipawlow.de
IS THERE A TALENT FOR HAPPINESS?
„He felt like something inside him was broken. Forever. His father‘s words took away the air to breathe. Worthless!, it hammered behind his forehead. Worthless!”
It is fascination at first sight when Wantscho and Rose meet: the seemingly exotic „man from the Balkans” and the happy-go-lucky girl who is longing for an adventure in the grey drabness of everyday life in the GDR. And the first years of their marriage in Bulgaria are definitely adventurous, and so is their later flight from the GDR into the West. But Wantscho is a man with two faces: As a psychiatrist he knows how to ease the emotional distress of others but is helplessly at its mercy himself. His family also can’t escape his sorrow. Years later, his daughter Nelli starts searching for traces: Who was this father who seemed like a stranger and yet was so close to her all her life?
- A great family novel, spanning three generations
- A narrative style that unfolds with incredible power through its simplicity
Nicki Pawlow, born in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in 1964, is the daughter of a Bulgarian father and a German mother and grew up in Thuringia. In 1977, the family fled to Baden-Württemberg in the West. She studied political science, Slavic philology, and modern history in Munich and, among other things, worked as a political publicist, editor, and screenwriter. Today, Nicki Pawlow works as a writer and lives in Berlin with her husband and their three children. www.nickipawlow.de
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