The Name was published in Bulgaria in 2012 to great critical acclaim, winning that year’s Helikon Award. The novel offers a fresh take on the sensational myth that Anastasia, the Russian Tzar’s youngest daughter, survived the execution of the royal family in 1918 and lived out her life under an alias. Karastoyanov’s focus, however, is not on dramatizing her life; instead, he uses this premise to interrogate what it means to live a life sundered from both personal and collective history. With reverberations of Jacqueline Harpmann’s I Who Have Never Known Men, Anastasia’s life represents a constant confrontation between the absurdity of being torn from one’s fate and the possibility of a future, all the while being tortured by the unbearable weight of memory. An understated, haunting perspective of the 20th century viewed from the muted lens of a small Balkan village, written in minimalistic, melancholic prose, The Name asks us to consider the human being outside of the sense-making boundaries of history.

cover design by dimitar kelbechev