Party Headquarters by Georgi Tenev

Party Headquarters Reviews

• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
  
  My main deciding factor on reading this book is that it is set in Bulgaria, by a Bulgarian author, and I had yet to read anything from Bulgaria! So - check. The story is short, set in a time immediately following the collapse of the Communist Party in Bulgaria and the renaming of the country in 1990 to the People's Republic of Bulgaria.
  
  At one point the author discusses what is truly meant by freedom, a concept he defines by the absence of law. And that's the best description of what is going on here - from sex that seems more like rape, all wrapped up in controlling the former leader of Bulgaria (referred to as K-Shev), to traveling around with a leather satchel of cash, to frequent use of pornography - the only thing they have is lawlessness, where before there was control.
  
  And chaos is welcomed, because during control came cancer and destruction (related to Chernobyl but also just governmental corruption). And as the party headquarters burn, the main character is set to move on with his life.
• 
  MJ Nicholls

  A peculiar novel featuring a narrator who narrates in an oblique manner events that occurred to him across the course and towards the end of an unpleasant regime (Bulgaria’s transition from communism to democracy), including his sexual relationship with the dictator K-shev’s daughter. Fragmented and perplexing at once, illuminating and lyrical at other times, upsetting and weird for the duration.
• 
  Kavita

  Bulgaria, ruled by dictatorship communism until 1989, was a country where basic information was kept from the public. Georgi Tenev, a Bulgarian author, explores the void left in the lives of people after a dictatorship falls and their inability to get past their past. In this book, he criticises the Chernobyl disaster, which was kept from the people of Bulgaria, even though their lives could be in danger. He also mentions the rampant corruption in high places, which allowed this to happen.
  
  The story does not follow any particular arc, and is in the form of a monologue about the narrator's thoughts. The narrator is a man who is in love with the daughter of K-Shev, the dictator and the man responsible for the cover-up. He suffers from cancer now in an ironic turn of fate. The big suitcase of money that K-Shev had stashed away is being delivered by the narrator. The story is nothing much and there is very little action. The author ruminates endlessly and I couldn't keep up my interest in his ramblings. The woman, as in many other cases, is just there to prop up the men and provide some sexual slant wherever required.
  
  I picked up Party Headquarters because it promised a thrilling tale. It turned out to be more metaphorical than thrilling, and I didn't really enjoy it. This is yet another case of a purple prose pushing a good tale to the background. There are many, many words that fall on top of each other but in the end, they don't really say much. I approve of the message, but it was a chore reading the book itself.
• 
  Simona

  The story is set in post-communist time and the main thread is a Chernobyl tragedy - disaster which was in Bulgaria hidden from the people. The story, which through metaphors and symbolism shows us the collective spirit of communism of ordinary people and corruption of privileged leadership elite is interesting, but for my taste written in too much experimental style to be able to enjoy.
• 
  Melissa

  I received an ARC from the publisher of this book through Edelweiss.
  
  The narrative of this book takes places during the 1980’s and 1990’s as the communism regime in Bulgaria collapses and the government goes through a transition to democracy. The narrator jumps from one time period to another in an erratic and almost frantic method. The book opens when his father-in-law, a man named K-Shev who is the cruel dictator of Bulgaria, has fled to Germany. The narrator is visiting the now sick and dying old man in the hospital and delivering a giant suitcase of money that K-Shev stashed away before his hasty retreat.
  
  The narrator spends his youth in a state of disarray and aimlessness. For a time he joins the army where he learns physical discipline and to be mute for long periods of time. He pushes himself by running to the point of pain and exhaustion in an effort to become a Cosmonaut or a pilot. During this time period when Bulgaria’s communist regime is falling apart, the narrator experiences his own identity crisis as he is trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life. He ends up in medical school where he meets his wife. But even medical school isn’t something that is able to ground him for very long since he is kicked out after his second year. It is in medical school that he meets and falls in love with his wife.
  
  But his wife is not just any ordinary woman; he happens to fall in love with the notorious dictator’s daughter. She refuses to talk about her father and there are hints that she has had her own unpleasant and traumatic experiences with him. Her most unpleasant and disturbing memory of him is how he chose to deal with the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. He keeps the news of the reactor’s meltdown from his people and continues to let them eat the food and drink the milk and water that might be contaminated by radiation. K-Shev sends his daughter to the local medical facility to be tested for radioactive poisoning but he never does anything to help the rest of his people. It seems a fitting punishment from the powers that be in the universe that he dies of a disease that has essentially poisoned his blood.
  
  K-Shev is a figure that constantly looms over the narrator’s life and gives him a never ending sense of unease. He writes, “The Boss’s circulatory system envelops us, every one of us.” When he is delivering the money to K-Shev he spends a significant amount of time jogging even to the point of vomiting. In his attempt to ease his mental anguish with physical exercise he also seeks out prostitutes during his time in Germany. He writes that even K-Shev’s death won’t offer any real emotional release: “To tell you the truth, I know that in the end his death will rob me of everything. It will leave me only the monuments, from which you can’t demand accountability, not for anything.” There is nothing the narrator can do to calm his roving thoughts; there is nothing he can do to erase the unpleasant memories of the past. Is there any way forward for him?
  
  In the meandering and poetic prose, there is a larger message to be found in this novel about the lasting effects of a totalitarian regime. Even though the Party Headquarters are burned down, the dictator is exiled and his sprawling home is boarded up, the people will not automatically forget decades of oppression. The transition from oppression to freedom is not an easy one and the emotional scares never truly disappear.
  
• 
  Jose Carlos

  LOS PECADOS DE LOS PADRES
  
  Era Günter Grass quién advertía, allá por los años cincuenta, que un día, en Alemania, los padres tendrían que afrontar el momento en que se vieran obligados a dar explicaciones sobre la barbarie del nazismo, a responder ante las preguntas de sus hijos, a intentar hacerles comprender cómo fue posible lo que parecía imposible y, sobre todo, por qué y cómo pudieron permitirlo. Valga esta afirmación, pedir cuentas de las atrocidades de sus mayores por parte de todo un grupo de jóvenes, para la novela generacional del búlgaro Georgi Ténev (Sofía, 1969). Porque Casa del Partido es, fundamentalmente, eso: una exigencia de explicaciones por parte de quienes nacieron a finales de los años sesenta, que soportaron los últimos veinte años de comunismo, el desastre de Chernóbyl’ y la caída del muro; una caída que dejó la convicción de un pasado sin sentido, de un presente caótico y de un futuro repleto de incógnitas, y que necesitan que alguien les justifique los motivos de tantos sufrimientos y desmanes.
  Es la obra de Ténev un réquiem preñado de preguntas por el sistema comunista: un sistema que sojuzgó a Bulgaria durante cuarenta y seis años hasta convertirla prácticamente en una República Soviética más o, como magistralmente la define el autor, una república tomatera (en contraposición a la tan latina y derechista república bananera) en su condición de marioneta de la URSS. Un réquiem, en efecto, personalizado en la figura decadente y moribunda del ex Número Uno del Partido, un tal K…shev, que podría ser espejo de cualquiera de los altos mandatarios del Partido, Dimitrov o Zhívkov, por ejemplo. El gerifalte padece un cáncer, por sus venas corre una sangre infectada, maligna, que se pudre, corrompida como todo el régimen derrotado, que, a través del personaje enfermo e incurable, Ténev pretende equiparar con el sistema comunista.
  La novela, de construcción y estructura evidentemente posmodernas, se centra en un par de sucesos temporales sobre los cuales gravita: el desastre de la central nuclear de Chernóbyl’, acaecido en 1986, y el incendio de la Casa del Partido de Sofía, en 1989. Este segundo gancho temporal se diluye rápidamente en el interior de la novela y tan sólo sirve para dar armazón a una intrincada, por momentos confusa, historia del robo del dinero de la caja del Partido por parte del propio K…shev.
  Será la catástrofe nuclear la que articule buena parte de la narración porque posee, además, una triple lectura: Ténev la utiliza como imagen y metáfora del fracaso de todo el sistema comunista, un sistema que les explotó en las manos; también como una situación de terror añadido al terror, una suerte de palimpsesto de horrores donde a las penurias del comunismo se le superponen y suman las revisiones médicas y las evacuaciones sin información a la población, una situación de pánico devastador sin respuestas oficiales; y, por último, el accidente de Chernóbyl’ es el reflejo de una ideología y una forma de vida infecciosa que echó a perder a varias generaciones de búlgaros, cuyo mal aún lo alberga en su interior la juventud que representa el protagonista.
  Dentro de ese intento innovador de la narrativa, Ténev elige una construcción polifónica, llamarla composición coral quizá sería demasiado, puesto que apenas se identifican cuatro o cinco voces (el protagonista, K…shev, la hija de K…shev y algún que otro personaje más, muy diluido), junto a una serie de referencias complementarias como son las letras de canciones, estrofas de poemas, versos insertados en el discurso y modificados al gusto del autor, y un vaivén temporal y fragmentario que no siempre consigue su objetivo.
  El artefacto literario compuesto por Ténev no es desdeñable, ni mucho menos carente de interés y de mérito, pero acusa algunos problemas estructurales que no ayudan al lector, inmerso en una composición narrativa que complica gratuitamente el argumento, simple ya de por sí, y que acaba por despistar, cuando no por cansar. El principal problema radica en la elección del multiperspectivismo, del polifonismo, de las voces que presentan prismas de la historia y que suenan todas como la misma voz del narrador, con lo que el recurso de la variedad de puntos de vista queda reducido a un truco fallido. La inserción de las tarifas del crematorio de Hamburgo, la inscripción de una lápida sepulcral, al estilo del collage literario, son técnicas algo manidas (podemos remontarnos a John Dos Passos o a Alfred Döblin), que no justifican de por sí la fragmentación y el multiperspectivismo como algo propiamente posmodernista. A esto hay que añadir que lo repetitivo de la trama y las situaciones sufren una acusada pérdida de fuelle a mitad de la novela, un texto que, además, deriva con facilidad al disparate (con el giro del turista espacial y la absurda trama del maletín con el dinero). Sin embargo, junto a estos problemas, Ténev alterna momentos brillantes.
  Entre esos grandes hallazgos literarios cabe destacar el epígrafe, apartado o capítulo, llámese como se quiera, titulado Mausoleo, donde el rito funerario, el culto al cadáver del prominente líder embalsamado, que se corrompe bajo afeites y perfumes, es la radiografía implacable de lo que fue el régimen búlgaro: un muerto andante, un zombi dirigido y devorado por la ideología impuesta por la Gran Madre soviética. Como hasta en eso también existe un sentimiento de culpa, el de ser menos que la referencia grandilocuente de la URSS, el cuerpo embalsamado del líder búlgaro se corrompe y sufre de alopecia, el túmulo es más sórdido, y todo en comparación es peor y más nauseabundo que los embalsamamientos y criptas conmemorativas de los líderes soviéticos. Esta comparación, a nivel cadavérico, posee una riqueza descriptiva olorosa y olfativa, que marca uno de los momentos culminantes de la novela, así como obliga al lector a esbozar una sonrisa helada de incredulidad y de asco. Sólo por este instante, apenas página y media, ya merece la pena leer a Ténev.
  Muerte, corrupción, enfermedad, cáncer… todo un repertorio de diagnósticos clínicos relacionados con el Thánatos que no buscan sino asemejarse a esas siglas, a esas palabras clave que articulan el régimen y que resultan vacías y sin vida como esqueletos, como la raspa del pescado: el Komsomol, los pioneros, el estamento militar, el aparataje del propio Partido… Todos ellos serán pertinentemente criticados como formas de reprimir la individualidad forjándola en ideario colectivo, de aplastar a la persona para supeditarla al uniforme dictado político. Y serán formas fracasadas, porque tras décadas de funcionar la maquinaria de aplastamiento, el protagonista de Casa del Partido sigue poseyendo el ansia de formular preguntas a los culpables, un enorme por qué que tal vez sólo encuentra respuesta en la propia muerte y la destrucción sin esperanzas.
  No en vano, la novela de Ténev es una novela de totalitarismos de izquierdas y, como tal, es fiel a uno de los principios de este género: el protagonista no triunfa, ni se redime. Queda, como mal menor, diluido o aplastado por la poderosa prensa del régimen, contra el cual no se puede luchar, aunque no exista ya. Porque su recuerdo, su herencia radiactiva y cancerígena, sigue siendo incurable.
  Una cosa más: la traducción de Francisco Javier Juez me ha parecido de verdad notable. Pertinente, eficaz y, sobre todo, literaria. Está muy bien. Yo no se búlgaro, así que sólo me baso en que la traducción mantiene un estilo literario y personal del autor, y novelístico, de manera que me ha parecido estar leyendo al autor en su lengua original, ya que nada chirriaba. Chapeau!
  
  Aún con evidentes imperfecciones, un libro sin duda interesante, enfermo de radioactividad y comunismo, de ideologías asesinas y periclitadas, que retrata la herencia de la maldad de los hombres en un baile post posmoderno de gran intención.
• 
  Aaron McQuiston

  This is a difficult little novel, set at the end of the communist reign in Bulgaria. Only 125 pages, but the pages move slowly, with passages read repeatedly, with moments that do not make sense, like given a puzzle that you are supposed to put together without a real picture to help. I enjoy the difficult book, but for some reason, I find this to be the most difficult book I've read in a long long time. The narration is unpredictable, and the development of the threads that you try to knot together are not long enough to hold onto. This should be something that I enjoyed, but I really didn't. instead I just drove through it. I know that this is short enough to reread several times to understand exactly what happens, but I have no real motivation to do so.
• 
  Jai Lau

  A difficult but fascinating read. Set after the fall of the Soviet Union, the population are still coming to terms with this shift and the book deals with the people's paradoxical hatred of the old system with that of their longing for and comfort in it. Bulgarian communism is symbolised by the antagonist, K-Shev, an all-encompassing party figure and the people's struggle is represented by the main character/narrator, who believes that nothing should remain of K-Shev after his cancer-induced death but also, realises that without K-Shev, he has little else. The mental stability of the narrator is an issue. Parts of his back story do not add up and his relationship with his wife, K-Shev's daughter, might not actually take place in reality. Indeed, she appears to him in the form of other women, including prostitutes that he meets in Hamburg. An ill-gotten suitcase of money and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster provide the fuel for the plot to drive forward but it does not quite come together.
• 
  TroTro

  A good book, but a bit artsy for me. If I knew my history better, I probably would have liked it better.
• 
  Anne

  I'm sorry -- this was just too disjointed for me. If I hadn't have purchased it for my European reading challenge, it would have been a DNF.
• 
  Tonymess

  Leaving, becoming distant from yourself, that’s at the basis of weightlessness. When you break away from your earthly stance, when you leave your orbit as well, the planets shrink in the portholes. Your individual body becomes the center of all attraction. You spin in the vacuum-womb like a stellar baby, who is the beginning and the end of everything, just as it is its very self.
  
  Bulgarian cosmonauts participated in the Soviet space program. The first Bulgarian visited space in 1979 on the Russian ship Soyuz-33. The second – and for the time being, the final – Bulgarian cosmonaut blasted off in 1988, several years before the break up of the USSR. (From “Notes on the Translation” in “Party Headquarters”.)
  
  On 26 April 1986 reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl power station blew apart. Five days later the Bulgarian State compelled people to parade in the “spontaneous manifestations” in celebration of May 1. That day was recorded as one of the days that the fallout from Chernobyl over Bulgaria was at its heaviest.
  
  "Bulgarian politicians kept quiet but shipped in uncontaminated food from other countries for their families," says Stefan Pavlov in an article entitled “Sofia’s Choice”. If you would like more details on the Bulgarian fallout from the Chernobyl disaster read Sofia Echo’s article “Bulgaria’s Chernobyl cover-up” here
  http://sofiaecho.com/2011/04/22/10792...
  
  And of course we have 2015 Nobel Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich’s work “Voices from Chernobyl” to give us even more details on the catastrophe.
  
  For my full review go to
  http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/20...
• 
  Gretchen

  This is an interesting short novel. It is written in a modern style (which means I did not understand everything on my first read - it definitely is a book that probably should be read a couple of times to get everything). It is a Bulgarian novel that has been translated into English. It begins with the main character and his thoughts about recovering a suitcase full of money from a bank that his father-in-law (a former Communist party member), who is dying, had stashed away. The money is the main theme that runs throughout the book, but the narrator jumps back and forth in time as he remembers important events in his life and important events in Bulgaria - such as Chernobyl, the Communist Party Headquarters burning down, etc. At times, it seems like the narrator changes, and I was not aware of this at first (this is the main reason I feel like the book should be read again - to try to parse who is narrating what). But that also is probably the point the author is trying to make - any of us could be any of these characters. The novel helped give me a sense of Bulgaria and its people.
  
  I won this copy in one of the Goodreads giveaways.
• 
  Dorly

  Хубава книга, много наситена, но и доста претенциозна като стил и сюжет. Добре е написана, успя да събуди в мен много чувства, включително и гняв. Гняв към всички онези, които причиниха на България 20 години преход, съсипаха най-хубавите години от живота на родителите ми и ме запокитиха далеч от родината. Така че в крайна сметка... препоръчвам книжката. И да не ви хареса - кратка е!
• 
  Екатерина

  Когато чета и слушам хората, които парадират (или заявяват на всеослушание), че не четат съвременна българска проза, предполагам те са "фрустрирани" именно от подобни книги.
  Няма да коментирам тази книга само ще кажа, че не е моят тип литература, нито моят тип безинтересен подход към описваните време и събития.
• 
  !Tæmbuŝu

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