I can't get over how much I liked this novel. Following the POV of the narrator (/author? it comes across as heavily autobiographical), an American teacher in Bulgaria, we track his relationship with a gay Bulgarian prostitute. The writing is so detailed and vivid—it perfectly captures the sensation of isolation an expat feels in a country where you only half-understand what people are communicating.

I liked these quotes:
"Maybe they were a mistake, my years in this country, maybe the illness I had caught was just a confirmation of it. What had I done but extend my rootlessness, the series of false starts that became more difficult to defend as I got older?"

"I didn't understand the bitterness with which I had spoken, the bitterness not just toward the woman but toward the place, this country I had chosen; I hadn't known I felt it, and I wondered how deep it went."

"I would write a poem about him, and then it would be the poem I remembered, which would be both true and false at once, the image i made replacing the real image. Making poems was a way of loving things, I had always thought, of preserving them, of living moments twice; or more than that, it was a way of living more fully."

"Love isn't just a matter of looking at someone, I think now, but also of looking with them, of facing what they face..."