The Glass River - pocketboek

Emil Andreev is one of the stars of contemporary Bulgarian fiction and drama. A master storyteller from Lom on the River Danube, he is the winner of several awards, including the Vick and Helikon prizes for fiction. His works have been translated into English, German, Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Serbian. He is the author of several collections of short stories - Lom Stories (1996), Late Art Nouveau (1998) and The Drunkards' Island (1999), the plays - To Kill a Prime Minister (2002) and Treasure Hunters (2003), as well as the novels - The Glass River (2004), The Curse of the Frog (2006) and Crazy Luke (2010). The Glass River has been filmed with an international cast and is already on screen in Bulgaria. The novel begins with the arrival of the French student, Helene Thibault, in the deserted Bulgarian village of Gradishte. She does her research work on the Bogomils for her diploma paper. At that time an art professor and his students are restoring the murals of the local church St. Nicolas. Two letters, N & D, are spotted on the frescoes of the church and Helene becomes involved in resolving the mystery behind them. Have the letters anything to do with the dualistic Bogomil faith and especially with the short excerpt from an old manuscript, The Book of Enoch, that she is shown by the "local intellectual" Victor Markov? Helene finds herself in a love triangle as well as in a series of astonishing events. A seance with the spirit of an Italian stonemason follows and eventually an old casket reveals the secret of the alleged Bogomil frescoes and letters.