...Балчик /...Balchic
Publisher: Avangard Print, Ruse, Bulgaria
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Bulgaria
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 987-954-337-126-6
Description: Foreword:
We are witnessing a renewed interest in historical exotics, somewhat ignored somewhat ridiculed, somewhat deliberately neglected. Here we have a confirmation of such positive trend in the reading public. This book gives us a refreshing assurance that books can be written with imagination, information, and accuracy. Everything that a good and fascinating historical reading needs. Its story is familiar and mysterious, true and fictitious at the same time. The coast of a semi-legendary palace in a sea town is the witness of a personal and global drama. Reshaping of Balkan and European boundaries, battles and negotiations, diplomacy and cruelty, the whirlwind of a war, first called the Great, and later, more sensibly – World War I, is presented in miniatures of humaneness compared to world historical misfortunes. 
On this background, the author accumulates such diverse and differently sourced information, combines dynamic reality with human emotions and silent love, which becomes part of historical existence. Humaneness often cast away under the roar of battles and the Jesuitism of peace negotiations. We can find everything in this book – Balkan temperament and endless love for Homeland, sophisticated social manners and the anguish of personal insecurity of Queen Marie. The last one is only possessed by intelligent, easily hurt and good people. If it is true that the royal crown is heavy, her life is the most impressive confirmation of such fate. That is how Balkan wars, court intrigues, love, friendship and betrayal can be seen and experienced. 
Therefore, you should read this extraordinary book. You will see in it much more than you have imagined you knew. About Balchik, the sea, the untold drama of a woman with a calling to be a Queen of a foreign country and because of that calling – doomed to sacrifice her personal happiness. She found comfort in flowers, the pictures of the sea she painted and the buildings she created. The Palace, Balchik, the Black Sea, and our land acquire a special zest. It leaves the monotonous sequence of chronicles and annals, of official historiography or the automatic lecture of a tourist guide. This book opens a page where the places you have seen or will see by the sea shine with new light and new importance. 
Prof. ANDREI PANTEV