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    Stork Mountain
    Stork Mountain
    Stork Mountain
    Audiobook12 hours

    Stork Mountain

    Written by Miroslav Penkov

    Narrated by Kirby Heyborne

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In Stork Mountain, a young Bulgarian immigrant returns to the country of his birth in search of his grandfather, who suddenly and unexpectedly cut off all contact with the family three years ago. The trail leads him to a village on the border with Turkey, a stone's throw away from Greece, high up in the Strandja Mountains-a place of pagan mysteries and black storks nesting in giant oaks; a place where every spring, possessed by Christian saints, men and women dance barefoot across live coals in search of rebirth. Here in the mountains, he gets drawn by his grandfather into a maze of half-truths. And here, he falls in love with an unobtainable Muslim girl. Old ghosts come back to life and forgotten conflicts blaze anew until the past surrenders its shameful secrets.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 15, 2016
    ISBN9781515974109
    Stork Mountain
    Author

    Miroslav Penkov

    Miroslav Penkov was born in 1982 in Bulgaria. He arrived in America in 2001 and completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology and an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. He has won the Eudora Welty Prize in Fiction, and his story “Buying Lenin” was published in The Best American Short Stories 2008, edited by Salman Rushdie. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas, where he is a fiction editor for the American Literary Review. He is the author of East of the West.

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    Reviews for Stork Mountain

    4/5

    16 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I'd describe this as a Young Adult book, with the focus on the story - the characters are very "flat".The nameless young narrator- a Bulgarian, now settled in the US, returns to his homeland with the aim of getting his share of the family land to pay off his student debts.Once there, he meets up with Grandpa- a man with many a tale to tell- and is embroiled in a quasi-mystical world: of fire dancers; people seized with a fever to walk on the hot coals. He falls for the rebellious daughter of the stern local imam; and there's a thing going on about the land being sold for a wind farm.Penkov DOES, quite cleverly, weave in much Bulgarian myth and history to his story- from Grandpa's own youth in communist times; through to the ancient Thracian tales of gods and the underworld. And- the constant throughout- the storks, wheeling above them.A brave attempt.
    • 5/5
      This is a magical novel narrated by a young man returning to the Bulgarian Strandja Mountains, like the storks return yearly, to find his grandfather and claim his inheritance. He has gone deeply into debt in America and plans to sell his ancestral land to bail himself out. Instead he is drawn into a tangled society inhabited by Christian and Muslim neighbors, a maze of dreams and helf-truths built by his grandfather, pagan myths and an ancient society of fire dancers. I found the novel, by turns, enthralling, quite funny and poignant, until the ending which didn't quite work for me. It's an intriguing first novel by a writer best known for his short stories.
    • 4/5
      While Mirsloav Penkov got internationally fame with his short-story titles, Stork Mountain is his first novel. The story about a young American student returning to Bulgaria, like a stork flies back to the nest he was born at, is part memoir, part a historical novel about Bulgaria, and a coming of age at the same time. Klisura, a remote village on the border with Turkey has been the scene for Thracians, Greeks, and Turks to conquer the country and impose their culture. Next to that Islam and Christianity also put their mark on the region, the voluntary and compulsive conversions, buildings, ownership of land and education.The story's pace is alternating throughout the book. From lengthy expositions of the storks' migration paths to short summarized eras, like "And then, devoid of people, the Christian hamlet was transformed into a border zone. Such was the end. (..) The years passed, Grandpa raised my father an honest, smart, hardworking man. My father met my mother, married her, and I was born. Then Communism fell and Father said, We have no future here." The book is full of repetitive small stories and phrases, hooks for the major story line. Set in the Strandja Mountains where black storks in nest in giant oaks and their lives move with the seasons. Pagan rituals like fire walking, worship of idols and Christian icons are mixed with the rages of the local imam and his daughter. Will the young American be free to fall in love with a Muslim girl? Will his grandfather reveal all answers he's looking for? Although it took me a while to get into the story, it then got my full attention until the very last page. A story well composed and told.