The Notebooks

 

 

 

The Reincarnationist Papers came into my possession while living in Rome in the late 1990’s.  I titled the compiled and translated work myself as the original notebooks came with no title and were only numbered 1, 2 and 3.  I noticed the three plain notebooks in an antique shop on the medieval via dei Coronari, just off Navona.  At the time I was conducting research for my first book, Insider’s Rome (Marshall Cavendish, publisher), a travel guide to some of the city’s more obscure but interesting sites.  They seemed out of place in an antique store, weathered but not quite old enough.  Idly picking up the first notebook, I was surprised to find it filled with Cyrillic handwriting.  Being a Russian speaker, the pages intrigued me; I purchased them for a meager 20,000 lire (about $10 US at that time). 

Despite lengthy efforts, I could not fully translate the text of the notebooks and eventually determined that they were Serbian, Bulgarian or Ukrainian, but definitely not Russian.

Following a hunch, I first went to the Bulgarian Embassy on Via Pietro Rubens north of the Borghese.  I struck up a conversation with an attractive receptionist and she confirmed the handwriting was Bulgarian.  Intrigued by the first few pages, she agreed to help me translate it.  Over the summer Marina and I set to work, she translating aloud to my typing accompaniment.  We became enthralled as the story unfolded in those summer evenings in my apartment on Caio Mario near the Vatican.  When the translation was finished, I set to work to verify what I could of Evan’s claim.  This research is detailed as endnotes to the text, the only editorial work required after translation.

D. Eric Maikranz