Is there such a thing as a green ameba? Sure there is, if we look through the multi-colored lense of an excellent student and active member of the socialist pioneer organization. And especially if the time is 1989 and the place – an international summer camp in North Korea. Alexandra, a 13-year-old Bulgarian, leaves for the DPRK with the assignment to keep a detailed diary and instructions to write a report about her stay. But why does the report come out red and blue? The answer is simple – in socialist Bulgaria, copying pencils were red on one end, blue on the other. The colors are indelible if mixed with water, but somehow manage to clash unmixably in the face of Bulgaria's opposing political affiliations. Alexandra comes home to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and her world will never be the same.
Velina Minkoff was born in Sofia in 1974. She has a degree in English from UCLA with a track in Creative Writing – Fiction. She was a Bulgarian-language fellow at the annual Sozopol Fiction Seminars of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (2014) and resident literary translator at Open Letter Books, USA (2016). Her debut novel The Red and Blue Report of the Green Ameba came out in French under the title Le Grand Leader Doit Venir Nous Voir (Actes Sud, 2018). She lives in Paris, where she teaches English, freelances as a translator and is currently working on her second novel and a new collection of short stories.
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