Goldstrand

Katerina Poladjan: “Goldstrand”

A dilapidated villa in Rome, an enigmatic therapist, and a man who, sitting on the couch, reinvents his own life story: In *Goldstrand*, Katerina Poladjan unfolds a multifaceted, bittersweet panorama of European history and the present.

At the center of the story is Eli, a former film director whose greatest successes are long behind him. In conversations with his “Dottoressa” in Rome, he begins to tell—or perhaps invent—the story of his family. His memories and speculations span an entire century and cross several national borders: from Odessa to Constantinople and Varna, all the way to Rome.

The starting point of this narrative is the Bulgarian resort town of Golden Sands, which was established in the 1950s as a socialist vacation project for citizens of the GDR. It is on this construction site that Eli’s own family history begins—marked by migration, political upheavals, and personal ruptures.

Katerina Poladjan, a multiple award winner and recipient of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2026), among other honors, combines historical dimensions with poetic imagination in this novel. Her narrative style intertwines personal memory with European history, creating a literary mosaic about origin, identity, and the act of storytelling itself.

A thoughtful, atmospheric novel about the fragility of memories and the ways in which Europe lives on within us.