Party Headquarters is a novel by Georgi Tenev

Georgi Tenev

Georgi Tenev is a Bulgarian novelist, short story writer, playwright and film/TV screenwriter.Major topics in Tenev’s works are the cultural and ideological void in the post-totalitarian societies and the consequent emerging of counter-cultures; the fall of utopias and the social amnesias...

 , awarded with Vick Foundation

Vick Foundation

The Vick Foundation was established by Edward Vick in February 2004 to award an annual prize for best Bulgarian novel. Vick's initiative was acclaimed by those who saw in the prize a new opportunity for the Bulgarian literature after almost 15 years of standstill...

 Award for Novel of the Year (2007). The plot evolves around the big change brought about by the collapse of the Communist Regime in Bulgaria. The novel addresses emblematic events of the 80’s and 90’s – the Chernobyl disaster

Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...

, the anticommunist protests, the arson attack over the Communist Party Headquarters

Largo, Sofia

The Largo is an architectural ensemble of three Socialist Classicism edifices in central Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, designed and built in the 1950s with the intention to become the city's new representative centre...

 in Sofia. It deals with typologically set associations such as the symbolic use of Georgi Dimitrov's Mausoleum

Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum

The Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum in Sofia, Bulgaria was built in 1949 to hold the embalmed body of the Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov . The construction of the Mausoleum was begun right after the news of Dimitrov's death. It was built for a record time of just 6 days, the time it took for...

in the plot. To a great extent, this is no historical account but a book about the traumas of totalitarian conscience, about politics interweaving with sexuality.

Reception

“Party Headquarters affected me personally. We still carry within ourselves the attitudes of socialism – subordination and privileges, forcible eroticism, the rule of partocracy. […] Socialism is not over. We live in it even now. […] The book is brilliant, with icy threads running in the ink. […] We fellow writers prefer keeping silence about Chernobyl, the fire in the Party Headquarters, the Pioneer camps; at best we turn our stories into exportable pamphlets. Tenev has managed to break open forbidden locks.”
(Marin Bodakov Culture )

“Black irony, the use of lexicon format, the documentary reminders – all this makes Party Headquarters one of the most influential books of the recent times. Reading this novel prevents us from cancelling the memories and from betraying our desire for freedom.”
(Amelia Licheva Capital Light)

“Party Headquarters interprets a deeply personal story where the private, the intimate, is publicly exposed.
The success of Party Headquarters is most probably due to the peculiar topics and to the clear and easy to apprehend language of the writer.”
(Maria Popova Politics)