AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD

Albert Cohen, a famous Israeli Byzantine scholar, flies to Bulgaria for a symposium, where he runs into Araxi Vartanian, an Armenian piano teacher who was his childhood sweetheart in the days when Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks, Jews, Greeks and Romanis all lived peacefully side by side, in a poor district of the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, near the Turkish border. In those days, the Orthodox priest Isai, the rabbi Ben David and the mullah Ibrahim Hodja all knew that, ultimately, they prayed to the same God. Their idyllic existence, however, came to an abrupt end with the advent of Communism. The Turks and Gypsies were resettled, the Jews emigrated to Israel, and Araxi's family was arrested while trying to get to Paris. In spite of decades of separation, Albert and Araxi have maintained a small flame for each other, a flame which is rekindled by Albert's visit. But the world of their childhood is long gone; the end of Communism has not brought back the good old days.