Prudence and the Red Baron

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Available in English in print and  through Amazon Kindle.  Click here. Available in Bulgarian translation from Ciela and Helikon Bg.
Click here for synopsis in Bulgarian


Just how prudent can Prudence be?

Prudence Box arrives to teach in the absurd world of communist Bulgaria just as its government is preparing to force people to change their names. As “Comrade Teacher”, her powers of discretion are sorely tested by the school regime and only her sense of humour rescues her from the demands of her eccentric colleagues.

Despite the packets of condoms packed by her coldly responsible stepfather, her height and upbringing have so limited her romantic expectations that it comes as quite a shock to be wooed by a handsome young man.

Only one problem – the young man’s father is a Colonel in State Security. He takes inexorable steps to part the young couple.

Prudence has to cope with the vicissitudes of love between cultures, tested by time and changing circumstances. Only after the Berlin Wall falls is romance rekindled, and in a spectacularly eccentric wedding the couple are reunited. But the fairy tale ending is threatened by the new reality of international crime and the Red Mafia.

Now with her husband in prison, her father-in-law on the run, threatening phone calls from an Albanian gang boss and her dominatrix tenant hitting the tabloid headlines, Prudence will be sore pressed to live up to her name and save her family.

Prudence and the Red Baron is a romantic black comedy that casts a personal light on the momentous changes in Europe over the last twenty years.

The time is right for contemporary drama based around the new and very different relationship between UK and the emerging Eastern Block countries. As you know from the British press, Bulgaria is a popular holiday and property destination for the British and the interest towards the country has increased greatly. There is now a significant Bulgarian population in the UK. This adaptation follows the success of Maria Lewyska’s novel “The History of Tractors in the Ukraine” which also combines love stories with an East European dimension.