What a marvellous introduction to Bulgarian literature this is. I started it a little tentatively, as it opens with a group of peasants in a pub, all with strange nicknames and seemingly rather eccentric, deciding to go out on a wolf hunt during a fierce snowstorm one wild night in 1965. But this is not a comic novel about amusing villagers. There’s occasional humour in it, but the lives of these villagers is ultimately a tragic one, and the book is an unrelenting depiction of the destruction of their village through forced collectivisation after the Communist takeover after WWII, when they are forced to abandon their centuries-old traditional way of life for the new Soviet reality. Six characters go out on the hunt and through their multiple perspectives and voices, the backstory of each is filled in and we learn of the links, often unhappy ones, which bind them. It’s a long and densely written novel and I found it took a while to enter into their world but once I did I was fully invested in their stories and was carried along, not least by the increasing tension that the author cleverly maintains right to the end. A complex book, admittedly, but accessible and engaging, and a valuable insight into mid-20th century Bulgarian history.

http://www.themodernnovel.org/europe/europe/bulgaria/ivailo-petrov/the-wolf-hunt/
http://www.themodernnovelblog.com/2017/05/17/ivailo-petrov-%d1%85%d0%b0%d0%b9%d0%ba%d0%b0-%d0%b7%d0%b0-%d0%b2%d1%8a%d0%bb%d1%86%d0%b8-wolf-hunt/

DNF. If this had been 300 pages long, as sold to us, I might have perservered; as it is life is too short for 600 pages of this kind of niche writing. File next to Satantango for over-long, impenetrable writing about rural central Europe.

In "Wolf Hunt," the threads of village passions come together as a group sets off on a wolf hunt that serves as a pretext for something even more murderous. Living side-by-side for decades, right through the upheavals of WWII and forced collectivization, has inflamed resentments rather than drawing people together, leading to a violent denouement.

Long, dense, and complex, in the tradition of East European prose, the story is told through multiple narrative voices, utilizing flashbacks and flash-forwards, internal monologue, inserted documents such as letters and journal entries, and generous portions of skaz, or oral/dialectical speech integrated into the text. The effect may be somewhat disconcerting to the Western reader more used to the mental candy of contemporary genre fiction or the stylings of Hemingway and his imitators, but it provides a richness, a depth, and a sense of interiority that a sparer style cannot achieve.

We are given the history of an approximate two-decade period, from WWII into the 1960s, of a single small village, as experienced by different village inhabitants, some of whom are mortal enemies of the others. The result is something like a very subtle detective novel, as we are told first one side of the story, and then another, completely different side that throws the events and the characters in an entirely new light, while minor events and characters in one chapter become central in the next. Along the way we are given a precis of mid-20th-century Bulgarian history and the attempts at collectivization and building a communist society. Readers familiar with Russian history and literature of the period, which is more widely known in the West than that of Bulgaria, may find the comparisons between the two to be particularly interesting, and for any reader this will be a fascinating introduction to a literature and culture that all too rarely receives exposure in the West. Not a quick read, but an extremely worthwhile one for anyone interested in Eastern Europe, especially its smaller and lesser known regions. Readers looking for something culturally exotic should take this opportunity to acquaint themselves with a literature they are unlikely to find elsewhere.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.