“The Ministry of Dreams” by Momtchil Milanov: discover the first pages of the book

"And at our house, it's so big that […] by the time I get from my room to the kitchen, I'm already hungry." The first novel by Bulgarian Momtchil Milanov, born in 1986, The Ministry of Dreams gives pride of place to children and their ways of telling stories, without this fantasy allowing us to exonerate ourselves from the political adventures of which a sort of dirigible balloon, steered in the wrong way, is the vector from the very first pages. Moreover, if the imagination of young Stern is never found wanting, the reality in which he struggles is often less sympathetic. Especially since his parents have been struggling with this reality for a while now, and their parents before them. In the novel, we encounter "guys in gray uniforms with empty eyes" and "very fat policemen" , various types of power in a way - "my mother does nothing but give me orders, as if we were in the navy" . But dreams are the big deal. It would be naive to assume that chance alone is their creator or their interpretation the main element of their existence. Freud has nothing to do here. It is with all the technology and bureaucracy put in place by the administration to more or less manage their functioning that little Stern will try to familiarize himself. An adult places her hand on the child's shoulder and it is "as if she were dusting him off." In this universe, it is not a sheep that this little prince is asking for