Garth Greenwell, an American poet, critic, and fiction writer, first came to prominence in 2011 with his novella Mitko. The book, a mix of fiction and memoir, is an account of the sexual and romantic relationship between two men: the eponymous Bulgarian male hustler, and the narrator, ostensibly based on the author, who works as a teacher at the American College in Sofia, where Greenwell taught for four years. In his debut novel, What Belongs to You, Greenwell expands Mitko into a 190-page meditation on sex, desire, identity, rejection, humiliation, and what it’s like to navigate these complex subjects in Bulgaria during the early 2010s. It’s a country that’s moved past the cultural stagnation of communism but still suffers from open homophobia and refuses even to acknowledge hate crimes.
Greenwell’s unnamed narrator is first introduced looking for sex in the public toilets beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, the young, troubled, and magnetic male hustler with whom he becomes infatuated. “I felt myself gripped yet again by both pleasure and embarrassment,” the narrator says, “and by an excitement so terrible I had to look away.”
By Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Greenwell appears in conversation with Paul Lisicky Sat 3/19, 3 PM Seminary Co-op Bookstore 5751 S. Woodlawn 773-752-4381semcoop.com Free with RSVP
