Sofia, Bulgaria - July 8, 1991  Here is a picture with my aunt Cheny (my father’s sister), me, my uncle Boubi and my father.  This was my first time back to Bulgaria, my native country.  I essentially escaped from there with my mother when I was 6 years old to get away from the hell of communism  (my uncle Boubi, who is pictured here, also came with us but decided to go back to Bulgaria only a few months later, and for reasons that were not very well understood by anyone who knew him).  I did not return there until almost 29 years later and about a year after the fall of the Iron Curtain.  My aunt Cheny and I were holding the Bulgarian edition of Crown of Thorns, which had just come out at the same time that I was there.  This book was written by Stephane Groueff, my uncle Boubi’s younger brother.  It is the biography King Boris III of Bulgaria.  I purchased several copies of it (there are five more on the table to the right) to give out as presents.  I also kept one for my uncle Stephane who had not yet seen this edition of his book.