If you have read Michael Cunningham’s “A Home at the End of the World” you may remember the deep, icy feeling of hopelessness that the novel leaves behind. Something similar awaits readers of “The Last Step” – Slaveykov revolves his novel around the eternal quest for intimacy, the eternal reaching to the hand of the other.
– Tsvetelina Vateva, Webcafe.bg
NOVEL, 130 PAGES, 2015
The Last Step
Yordan Slaveykov’s debut novel The Last Step is a compelling read, setting the life of a family from rural Bulgaria against the backdrop of the last years of communism, the police state, the Juvenile Labour and Education Detention Schools, and the early years of “democracy” that came after the fall of the Berlin Wall bringing with them the opportunity for criminal enrichment. The Last Step goes beyond the stereotypical notions of good and evil and becomes a novel about the impossibility of emotional connection between people who find themselves torn between a desire to be faithful to who they are and a desire to be loved. And whilst searching for a way forward through this impossible situation, ideas are raised that many would find unacceptable. An acclaimed theatre director, playwright and writer, Slaveykov compassionately dissects life on the margins of society in a book that offers parallels with Emanuelle Pagano’s Faces on the Tip of my Tongue.
— Yana Ellis