What happened to the ideal Modernist city on the edge of Bucharest, written with Vlad Odobescu and published in The Black Sea and DoR With the air rank with dust, thick with exhaust and deafened by the burr of drills and car-horns, Bucharest’s western district of Drumul Taberei is a typical zone of the Romanian […]
How the planning of Communist blocks in Bucharest changed from a western vision of functional housing to a sabotage of the city – a micro-history of a megalopolis: published in The Black Sea, co-written with Vlad Odobescu To an outsider, Bucharest is a sea of uniform blocks that hustle and crush a pre-World War II city […]
A young woman is possessed by the spirit of a dead villager. Her neighbours dig up his corpse. The ritual begins A report from Oltenia, south Romania published in The Black Sea with Ovidiu Dunel-Stancu, and a video is here Fog has fallen on the plains. Between them runs an empty road, recently mended at […]
The President of the USA associated with a Kazakh business network that was subsequently involved in controversial football deals and a trial in Turkey concerning trafficking in underage Russian girls Published in The Black Sea, as part of the European Investigative Collaboration’s Football Leaks probe The President of the USA Donald Trump has […]
Scandal on the Med: a police raid, suspected trafficking of girls and connections to the elite of America, Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan: new findings published in The Black Sea Written in collaboration with Zeynep Sentek and Craig Shaw Antalya. Turkey’s pre-eminent seaside resort. A 450-foot yacht moored on the Mediterranean shore. The Savarona. This mega-vessel had […]
A short story published in the Bristol Short Story Prize anthology GUS BROOKS TROUBADOUR MADMAN LIFE GAZER POP UP X Click to exit Gus Brooks ‘A better class of scum’ OUT NOW on Riposte Records Contains the tunes ‘England doesn’t want you’, ‘Love after love’ and ‘Stained by eyeliner’ Buy it HERE LINK […]
While grand residential projects help regenerate the outer centre of the Spanish capital’s district of Delicias, Romanian beggars build shanty-huts in the dirt – a short report written with Vlad Odobescu for The Black Sea Delicias. In English this means ‘Delights’. A district in outer central Madrid. A warm Wednesday. Huge new apartment complexes of brick […]
We wanted to expose how Romanians are the main nationality of male prostitutes in Rome… and we did not do it An article co-authored with Vlad Odobescu and published in The Black Sea A taxi driver told us where to find boys. His name was Mario. He wasn’t an average taxi driver. He ran an […]
A piece of fiction published in the excellent Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 8 Ana was the last name on the list. I had not met her at the court hearings or at the committee gatherings. Her name was not on any petitions. As far as I knew, the other women from the association […]
Today a cool March light is giving way to a humid afternoon, and I have just left the Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest, which has closed its doors. The reaction from the city’s passionate reading community has been shock and grief, as though a well-loved relative not seen for years has suddenly announced […]
Michael Bird Writer & Journalist 