Exotic travels + Juicy writing

Balkan specialist Jan Buruma is a professional MA certified archivist and an experienced MA certified librarian. And a passionate traveller.

I agree with Polish travel writer Richard Kapuchinski – you can only write about a country after you were there. You must know how a street smells, you must know how local people dress, you must eat local food and drink local drinks. And getting ill in India is not nice, but it is part of travelling. Be sure to take the right drug to get healthy.

Jan Buruma was many times in Bulgaria and in Ukraine in the 1990’s and 2000’s as freelance and voluntary journalist. Many people think those countries are just and only poor and dangerous. I don’t agree, I had there the best years of my life.

He witnessed most changes first hand and wrote amongst others for Dutch Leeuwarder Courant, German Glaube in der 2. Welt and Prague based Transitions Online.

In 2017 Jan Buruma changed to romantic archive thrillers and wrote Bulgaars labyrint, starring male archive professor Von Falckensteyn, about the 1978 umbrella killing of Georgi Markov.

In 2021 he wrote Von Falckensteyn’s second romantic archive thriller Het Zwarte Handboek.

The hero in Treasure Lost, Jan Buruma’s 3rd romantic archive thriller, is totally different. Irina Petrova is a most female archive professor at Balkan University Bulgaria in the town of Veliko Turnovo. She must check in Rio de Janeiro at the Brazilian National Archive, if an old document is real, or fake.

Jan Buruma works on Heart Break Travel To India, his 4th romantic archive thriller, again starring Irina Petrova. Now she must in New Delhi check if an old document in the Indian National Archive is genuine.