Homeland and abroad Diary

« Motherland » by Nikolai Terziyski

« Jeanette 45 », 2025

« For more than two decades, it’s not waiting for anything. Besides her. She doesn’t believe in her. »

The initial sentences of the book « Rodgy » by Nikolai Terziyski set the basic tone of narrative – expectation, despair and quiet suffering. The book tells of the residents of Middlevgrad – a summary image of the Bulgarian provincial city, and the surrounding villages of Goren and Lower Pole. The places are marked by the absence of the young and the aimless existence of the elderly, abandoned by their children and waiting forever their return. The art world is gloomy, filled with melancholy, a One of the main problems is that of abandonment – Parent, child, beloved woman, birthplace.

The abandoned and forgotten provincial Bulgaria – the conceptual nucleus of « home », He serves as Nikolai Terziyski as a new perspective on the topics of love, wandering and orphanage already known from his previous books. His novels « Excommunication » (2017), « The Chronicles of the Unfamper » (2019) and « Stars Under the Eyes » (2022) are well received by both the ordinary reader and the literary critic. The author is the winner of national literary books, as « Southern Spring » and « Hristo G. Danov ». Experiment.

« Homeland » genre has been identified as a « story novel ». The sixteen stories build a mosaic picture of the same world – the world of the small deserted city or the deserted abandoned village. The characters who share a common fate move from story to story, complementing the storyline, thus creating a sense of narrowness of the art space. Some of the stories have a confession, others involve the reader in dialogue, others are led by a third -sided narrative. The narrative technique aims to recreate the suffering and alienation from both very subjective and objective perspective to add authenticity to the story.

Every resident in Middlevgrad or in the surrounding villages has a child who went abroad in search of a better life. The absence of a loved one who abandoned his birthplace and his parents determines the being of the elderly, and the absence feels like a painful gap in their souls. In some cases, beloved sons and daughters return, but this return does not bring comfort to anyone, but rather confirms the tragic division. The people of the past are gone, and space is both the same and different. « The name was the same. The place was the same. But the village was different. »

The Novel of Stories attempts to capture the whole tragedy of the depopulated Bulgarian villages and the deserted small citiesS Middlevgrad, Upper and Lower Pole are not only fictional toponyms, they are symbols of decay, spoil and the slow disappearance of a warm and cozy collective world. With Elinpelin’s sadness, but in a modern context, Nikolai Terziyski introduces into his book the opposition – foreign, binding it to the conflict between homeland and abroad.

It is a major in every story of the novel collection. Life in Middlevgrad and the surrounding area is devoid of perspective and meaning. Against the backdrop of villages where brandy is the only way to survive and the pub is the center of public life, the various life stories of emigrants unfold, all of them marked by a common feature – failure.

The character system of the book is rich and colorful – dramatic men whose life is determined by the presence or absence of a beloved woman; abandoned old men making desperate attempts to drown loneliness in alcohol; A mother waiting for her son for years to return home for Christmas.

Both ordinary people with ordinary life stories are present, as well as incredible characters as a world -renowned poker player, crazy wanderer, eleven -year -old terrorist girl, rock star. « Different, but also the same » – this is how the narrator of one of the stories defines them. They are the same because each of them carries the mark of failure – a writer who will not be able to write anything significant, an actress who probably will not step on the big stage, a son or a daughter who move away from her parents forever, a father who abandons his wife and children.

The book questions whether it is possible for a person to deny his or her origin. However, a clear answer was quickly given – the attempt to complete a complete detachment, family, homeland does not lead to the success and realization of dreams, but to the loss of self. The characters who leave their native places lose their identity, the accumulated wealth, the meaning of their existence, their loved ones, a beloved woman, or just die outside the country.

According to Rodgy, happiness outside the home, away from home, is impossible. Return, on the other hand, is most often devoid of nostalgia, it is a rather unclear need, internal need, unconscious demand for integrity. « So when we are there on the way, we become real. We become one. Is that the point of family? « 

The longing for wholeness has been encoded in the title of the narrative novel. Nikolai Terziyski refers to an ancient geological era when there was a single continent called « home » on Earth. The word is in Russian, but because of the phonetic proximity to the « country » it gives the impression that the homeland is the only place where integrity is possible. At the same time, however, the book suggests that life is a cycle of beginnings and ends, living is a continuous process of decay and gathering. « This is our whole story – connecting and dividing. Merging and disintegration. Self -creation and self -destruction. »

« Motherland » sends the message that one cannot live entirely alone, It will always be insufficient, incomplete in itself a small link from the big world. Its existence only makes sense through the connection with the other, through the warmth of the family, the belonging to the native land. The idea was inspired by the motto – a quote from John Dun in translation of Alexander Shurbanov: « No man is an island entirely for himself; every person is short from the continent, part of the land. » Thus, from the first pages, attention is focused on the vulnerability of the lonely person and the need for sharing.

Individualistic philosophy is denied, in the novel, it is always due to unconsciousness, selfishness or narcissism. In order to be truly happy, the individual must contact the other, convince himself of the comfort of the family hearth, not to forget his descent.

« Rodium » is a book about absences, of the gaps that people leave when they leave. But it is also a book of hope that manifests itself in the very insistence of the author to remember who we were and where we went from. Nikolai Terziyski attempts to build a painfully recognizable picture of modern Bulgaria – a country of non -compliance and disintegrated relationships, but also of stubborn, attractive, eternal love.