The most striking image of extreme eros and extreme pain is that of Christ on the Cross. This book of 77 poems by the Bulgarian author Tsvetanka Elenkova navigates between these two extremes. The poems are like a pulsation, or a gesture, and don't take a breath. In this sense, there is no space or silence in them and yet a gesture, for example of pointing or stopping, when it is tired and the fingers relax, becomes one of blessing and so it is that the poet Iana Boukova writes of this book: 'Gesture introduces silence, replacing words and their definitions. There are whole passages full of the underwater silence of one gesture'. It is rare to have a book of Bulgarian literature published in English and the reader will find here many elements of Bulgarian culture and the Orthodox tradition.

Translated by: Jonathan Dunne