My Brother's Suitcase: Stories About the Road

This is a book that traces the boundaries of home.

Twenty-two stories dedicated to the road. Twenty-two essays about life on the verge of languages and worlds.

"My Brother's Suitcase" is an anthology of twenty-two stories about the evasive nature of the modern concept of ‘e/im/migration.’ A book about the language we feel at home with. About the suitcases that we carry around the world-suitcases full of memories, old photos, and dreams of home.

"The reflective, funny and bittersweet stories in My Brother's Suitcase made me rummage through my own baggage, accumulated over twenty years of expat life in Bulgaria. And like many of the authors here, I found that the more difficult borders to cross are actually those interior boundaries, heavily fortified with barbed concepts such as "home", "native language" and "belonging". Kudos to Nevena Dishlieva-Krysteva and ICU for providing this travel guide for the immigrant's soul!"
Angela Rodel

"Few anthologies have the emotional intensity of "My Brother's Suitcase". This suitcase of a book carries many stories, voices, and roads. Closing it, you realize that its magic lies in how light it is, even if it contains thousands of kilometers. Even if it is heavy with departures and returns, and tells the fate of an entire nation, it is light."
Kapka Kassabova

Introduction

• No Rewind, or the Beginnin of the Road

Katerina Stoykova

• Things That I Didn't Know
• Would Happen After I Immigrate

Ivo Ivanov

• The Power of Our Disquiet

Neva Micheva

• On the Way to Somewhere Else

Gioia Guerzoni

• A Home Made of Words

Dimiter Kenarov

• A 360° Photograph of San Francisco's Ocean Beach

Kapka Kassabova

• Ruin Blues

Babak Salari

• Where Is the Friend's Home?

Elena Panayotova

• Lessons in Non-Attachment

Pierre J. Mejlak

• Fields of Barley

Albena Todorova

• The Birth of Migration

Javor Gardev

• The Third Person

An Pham

• A Vietnamese Girl with a Martenitsa

Georgi Gospodinov

• Notes from the Monastery

Vera Trajanova

• Nortern Lights

Vladislav Hristov

• The Little Golden Bell

Rana Dasgupta

• The Permanence of Temporary Things

Ekaterina Petrova

• Where the Heart Is

Zoya Marincheva

• Meridians and Demons

Edgar Villanueva

• ... But Where?

Dimitar Kambourov

• Exportations

Milena Varzonovtseva

• O Canada!

Guerassim Dichliev

• Onboard Notes from the Year I Traveled 100 000 Kilometres

Acknowledgments