What the “Transition” Left Behind: On Joanna Elmy’s Born of Guilt

Joanna Elmy’s debut novel, which has been a notable success in Bulgaria since its 2022 release and is now available in English through Angela Rodel’s clear translation, follows three generations of Bulgarian women—Yana, her mother Lily, and her grandmother Eva—through periods of significant upheaval: the fall of Stalinist rule, the challenging decade of the 1990s known as the “transition,” and the uncertain immigrant experience of the 2010s. It is a bold and confident work, characterised by a fragmented, multi-voiced narrative that avoids a straightforward timeline in favour of thematic accumulation, revisiting wounds from different perspectives and times. Beyond its literary craftsmanship, the novel’s importance lies in the specific historical issues it explores. The “guilt” referenced in the title is not purely psychological but is rooted in a particular economic rupture—though the novel emphasises how this rupture is experienced within a family, rather than focusing solely on the historical event that caused it.

By nesting Yana’s story within those of Lily and Eva, Elmy spans a vast historical period without departing from the intimate focus on domestic life. Eva’s chapters start after 1944, highlighting a father persecuted under the new communist regime. Lily’s sections guide readers through Bulgaria’s 1990s—marked by austerity, crime, and social collapse—which Western reports euphemistically term the country’s democratic “transition.” Yana’s perspective shifts to the United States, where she arrives as a young Bulgarian student and witnesses the death of a fellow Eastern European in a car crash, prompting her to explore her family’s hidden past.

This structure carries a powerful ideological message. Mainstream Western historiography often depicts Eastern Europe’s transition from totalitarianism to democracy and economic freedom. However, here, through three generations of women’s experiences, it is portrayed as an ongoing cycle of dispossession. Instead of security, state repression has led to a decade of economic decline, widespread unemployment, and gendered violence amid Bulgaria’s economic privatisation. Yana, born shortly after what the novel repeatedly refers to as "the end of history,” does not inherit the freedom promised at that time. Instead, she is shaped by her mother and grandmother's histories of social crises. Her attempt to escape via seasonal labour migration to the U.S. marks another chapter in this ongoing catastrophe.

Mia Levitin’s Review of Born of Guilt

Mia Levitin’s review of Joanna Elmy’s Born of Guilt exemplifies modern liberal-bourgeois literary criticism: polished, craft-focused, and largely silent on the novel’s historical and social context. While her critique offers some insights—such as recognising Elmy’s formal ambition and emotional depth in the intergenerational story—it ultimately downplays the novel’s political and historical significance. Instead, it follows a common trend: reducing a socially and politically urgent catastrophe to personal traumas, aesthetic decisions, and supposed universal emotions.

Levitin views Bulgaria’s post-1989 “transition” as an almost natural backdrop — a fog of hardship, instability, and generational pain — rather than recognising it as a violent, IMF-driven process of capitalist restoration that led to mass unemployment, demographic decline, and social infrastructure collapse. In her review, the 1990s are seen as a regrettable but unavoidable phase in Bulgaria’s “modernisation,” a turbulent period that mainly adds texture to the overall narrative.

This is an ideological stance, not a neutral omission. By not naming the political and economic forces behind the devastation Elmy describes, Levitin perpetuates the common Western narrative: Eastern Europe’s suffering is seen as an unavoidable cost of “freedom,” and the chaos of the transition is viewed primarily as individual trauma rather than rooted in class politics.

Domestic violence and addiction as de‑historicised “themes”

Elmy’s novel illustrates how repeated social crises influence domestic abuse, addiction, and self-blame. At the same time, Levitin reduces these issues to universal literary themes like "dark themes,” “family secrets,” or “psychological complexity,” removing them from their social context. This framing is deliberate, serving as a mechanism for bourgeois criticism to safeguard the ideological purity of capitalist restoration. Recognising that the violence in "Born of Guilt" stems from structural causes—such as privatisation, austerity, and the breakdown of collective life—would force acknowledgement of the political accountability of Western authorities and financial institutions. Levitin’s review avoids addressing this political reality altogether.

Levitin’s analysis of Yana’s migration to the US follows a consistent pattern. She emphasises cultural dislocation, identity conflicts, and the emotional strains of living between two worlds—common immigrant themes—but she fails to address the core historical question: why did an entire generation of young Eastern Europeans need to leave their homelands to survive? The answer is the economic restructuring after 1989, which turned Bulgaria and neighbouring countries into labour-export economies. Nevertheless, Levitin’s review portrays migration as a personal journey, a rite of passage, or a universal story of “finding oneself abroad,” while the structural exploitation driving this migration remains unmentioned.

Levitin’s review exemplifies a common pattern rather than an isolated flaw. Mainstream literary criticism, especially in Anglo-American contexts, often serves an ideological purpose: it converts politically and historically specific suffering into universal, apolitical “human stories.' This process upholds the myth that the post-1989 world order was both necessary and ultimately positive. Accordingly, the reviewer’s role shifts from analysing history to making it more acceptable. In this way, Levitin’s review aligns with the cultural narrative of the “end of history.” It commends Elmy’s emotional insight while downplaying the novel’s historical significance, framing "Born of Guilt" as a work of psychological realism rather than a critique of the social destruction caused by capitalist restoration.

What her review cannot see

What Levitin cannot accept—because it would breach the ideological boundaries of mainstream criticism—is that the “guilt” in Elmy’s novel isn't a personal heirloom but a societal one. It reflects the legacy of political actions by specific institutions and individuals. Eva, Lily, and Yana did not create the circumstances that influenced their lives; they merely endured them. By sidestepping the identification of the responsible parties for that disaster, Levitin’s review unintentionally upholds the very ideological erasure that the novel challenges. Consequently, the review offers a refined, empathetic, but ultimately depoliticised interpretation—highlighting the symptoms without addressing their root causes.

Guilt as the wrong word for the right feeling

The novel’s true strength is in depicting how domestic abuse, self-blame, and generational trauma are conveyed almost silently from mother to daughter — with each woman believing she alone is to blame for the violence and chaos around her, and each hesitant to reveal the truth of her experiences to the next generation. Elmy captures these psychological dynamics with clarity, avoiding the trap of simplifying or neatly resolving the abuse. Despite its irrationality, each woman’s guilt becomes a hereditary inheritance, passed down like property.

From a materialist perspective, the main challenge is that the novel mostly remains at the family level. Issues like domestic violence, addiction, and dislocation are depicted as inherited psychological facts rather than as signs of the specific historical trauma—the destruction of Bulgaria’s planned economy and the social chaos that followed—that the novel’s timeline directly connects to them. The economic collapse of the 1990s is vividly portrayed through atmosphere: austerity measures, queues, and a sense of structures collapsing. However, it is less frequently examined as a historical process with clear causes and beneficiaries. The novel focuses more on how capitalist restoration impacted these women’s inner worlds than on explaining why it occurred or who benefited.

Immigration without its economics

Yana’s American chapters follow a similar pattern, depicting her as a seasonal worker—a part of the large post-1989 wave of Eastern European migration to Western Europe and the U.S. This is shown mainly through themes of cultural alienation and unresolved personal trauma: the challenge of balancing two worlds, guilt over leaving family, and disorientation from American consumer excess contrasting with her upbringing in austerity. However, the underlying economic system that made this migration necessary remains largely unexamined. The ‘shock therapy” reforms in post-communist economies did not lead to convergence with Western standards but instead fostered a sustained labour-export relationship. Countries like Bulgaria provide cheap, mobile labour to wealthier nations while their social infrastructure weakens. While Yana’s personal story is compelling, structurally, it is just one example within a broader historical pattern that the novel hints at but does not explicitly explore.

 A novel of symptoms, beautifully observed

This critique extends beyond the book's literary qualities. Elmy’s skilful navigation of perspective shifts and her decision to avoid didacticism on heavy themes like domestic abuse, addiction, poverty, and political disillusionment are more strengths than weaknesses. Many politically engaged novels struggle under their own weight, but Elmy avoids this by emphasising specific, lived details over overt argumentation. The resemblance to Georgi Gospodinov and Olga Tokarczuk is justified, as Elmy, like them, combines personal and national memory and uses a fragmented style to illustrate historical ruptures.

However, for a reader seeking to understand why post-communist Eastern Europe fell into such social despair—not just through one family's view—the novel highlights emotions rather than causes. This is a valid artistic decision, done with skill. As a result, the "guilt” in the title is portrayed as a personal legacy, not a reflection of the wider historical forces that resulted from an intentionally planned economic change. The real creators of this shift were never Eva, Lily, or Yana.

Born of Guilt by Joanna Elmy, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, is published by Faber.

📚 Sources and Bibliography

I. Primary Historical and Economic Sources on Bulgaria’s Transition

• International Monetary Fund (IMF). 25 Years of Transition: Post‑Communist Europe and the IMF. Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2014. Comprehensive official account of IMF‑directed stabilisation, liberalisation, and privatisation programmes across Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria.
• Britannica Editors. “Bulgaria – Transition, Reforms, EU.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Updated July 31, 2026. Overview of Bulgaria’s political and economic reforms after 1989, including price liberalisation, restitution, IMF involvement, and privatisation.
• Dimitrov, Ivan. “From Transition to Stability: How Bulgaria Built Its Modern Economy.” Bulgarian News, Analytics, Reports, 13 November 2025. Provides detailed data on hyperinflation (1,000% in 1997), GDP contraction (≈30% between 1990–1997), unemployment (≈15%), poverty (≈30%), and the corruption‑ridden privatisation process.

II. Scholarship on Shock Therapy, Privatisation, and Post‑Communist Collapse

• Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books, 2007. Foundational analysis of “shock therapy” as a political strategy, relevant to Bulgaria’s rapid liberalisation.
• Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalisation and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton, 2002. Critical account of IMF and World Bank policies in post‑communist economies.
• Kornai, János. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press, 1992. Essential background on the economic structures dismantled during the transition.
• Orenstein, Mitchell; Bloom, Stephen; and Róna, Dániel. Postcommunist Welfare States. Oxford University Press, 2008. On the social devastation produced by rapid marketisation.

III. Labour Migration and Eastern Europe’s Post‑1989 Labour‑Export Model

• Favell, Adrian. Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agendas in Migration Studies. Routledge, 2015. On EU labour mobility and the structural drivers of Eastern European migration.
• Kahanec, Martin; Zimmermann, Klaus F. (eds.). EU Labour Markets After Post‑Enlargement Migration. Springer, 2016. Empirical analysis of post‑2004 migration flows, relevant to Bulgaria’s labour‑export dynamics.
• World Bank. Migration and Remittances Factbook. Various editions. Data on Bulgaria’s remittance‑dependent economy post‑transition.

IV. Bulgarian‑Specific Social and Historical Studies

• Ghodsee, Kristen. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism. Duke University Press, 2011. Ethnographic account of gendered precarity, domestic violence, and social collapse in Bulgaria after 1989.
• Ghodsee, Kristen. The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Duke University Press, 2005. On gender, labour, and the social consequences of marketisation.
• Bell, John D. Bulgaria in Transition. Westview Press, 1998. Early but still essential account of the political and economic chaos of the 1990s.

V. Contextual Works on Eastern European Memory, Trauma, and Post‑Communist Literature

• Gospodinov, Georgi. Time Shelter. Liveright, 2022. A literary exploration of memory and historical rupture in post‑communist Europe.
• Tokarczuk, Olga. Flights. Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017. On fragmentation, migration, and the psychological residue of historical upheaval.
• Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin, 2005. Essential macro‑history of Europe’s political and economic transformations.

VI. Useful Articles From WSWS

(These are not from the search results but are standard WSWS‑relevant sources for contextualising capitalist restoration and its ideological treatment.)

• David North. “The End of the USSR and the Fate of Eastern Europe.” World Socialist Web Site, various essays.
• Peter Schwarz. “Eastern Europe and the Social Catastrophe of Capitalist Restoration.” WSWS, multiple analyses.
• Clara Weiss. “The Human Cost of Post‑Communist Transition.”