This study seeks to show the process of development by which my writing of this series of short stories has responded to my relationship to a welcoming, albeit alien, culture; namely: a small mountain village
in south west Bulgaria. It also explores my responses to living and working within that culture, and the ways in which my studies of the folk culture, history and the impact of western culture on existing cultural
beliefs and values have also affected both my writing and my own rather ambiguous cultural background (see introduction p. 1).
The core of the thesis is a collection of eighteen short stories, written to be performed, and consequently written in storyteller’s style.
All of the stories, excluding the first and the eighteenth, were written during my two year stay in Bulgaria, and linked using the conceit of the fictional storyteller, Ivan Levsky, and all were written in response either to historical events, cultural events or local incidents or characters. It also seeks to illustrate the way in which my work became increasingly reliant on the freedom that Magical Realism allows.
It was this freedom that led me to write this collection in the style in which it is written, and led me to the final conclusion that I had no other option of saying what I wished to say in the way in which it was said; hence the rather ambiguous title: Magical Realism; Master or Servant?
The literary background is explored through critical reflections in the final chapters. Where appropriate I have explained the genesis of each work and, where appropriate, the influences of the work of other writers upon my writing; in particular the works of Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter. I have also included short critical explorations of the major works of both of these writers.
As the stories contain Bulgarian and Turkish words which may not be familiar to some readers I have also included a glossary. For the same reason I have included a brief historical time line relevant to each story.