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About the Author

Martin Kostov is a Bulgarian author, software architect, and computer-science researcher. He grew up on the Black Sea coast and lives in Sofia. The Circus Money, his first novel, is Book One of The Offline Years, a literary coming-of-age series set in Bulgaria before smartphones.

Martin Kostov grew up on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and now lives in Sofia. He is a software architect and computer-science researcher whose working life has been spent on the other side of the machines remembered in The Circus Money. His fiction explores friendship, memory, class, migration, and the years before everyone carried a screen. The Circus Money is his first novel and Book One of The Offline Years.

Short Description

On the Bulgarian Black Sea around 2000, a boy raised in his parents' computer club learns to read every system around him, except the cost of arranging the people he loves.

Medium Description

Bulgaria, around 2000. Fourteen-year-old Niko grows up in his parents' computer club in Balchik, where time is sold by the hour and every boy knows what ten extra minutes is worth. With Rado, Toni, Dani, and Filip, he turns money meant for the circus into the first legend of the year, then builds a childhood from shared passwords, one-ring phone calls, sea-snail money, and risks no adult would approve of. Niko can read prices, routes, habits, and games. What he cannot read is the cost of treating other people like systems he has permission to manage.

Long Description

Bulgaria, around 2000. The internet is rented by the hour, photographs cost money, and a bad decision can still disappear, unless the town turns it into a legend.

Fourteen-year-old Niko grows up in his parents' computer club in Balchik, where every minute has a price. With Rado, Toni, Dani, and Filip, he turns money meant for the circus into the first legend of the year, then builds a childhood from shared passwords, sea-snail money, one-ring phone calls, and risks no adult would approve of.

Niko is good at systems. He reads prices, routes, habits, and games faster than the people around him. His flaw is not that he fails to notice others. He notices too much, then mistakes understanding a pattern for permission to manage it. The cost lands on Kalina, Dara, Rado, and eventually on Niko himself.

Years later, after the photographs are lost, he reconstructs the year he learned that being right and doing right are not the same thing.

The Circus Money is an adult literary coming-of-age novel about friendship, first love, class, migration, and the last years before memory became permanent.

Book Facts

• Title The Circus Money
• Series The Offline Years, Book One
• Author Martin Kostov
• Genre Adult literary / upmarket coming-of-age fiction
• Setting Balchik, Bulgaria, around 1999-2001
• Language English
• Publication Autumn/Winter 2026
• Publisher Offline Years Press
• Formats Kindle at launch; paperback when confirmed; hardcover later

Cover

The final cover will appear here ahead of publication.

Interview Angle

A systems architect writes about a boy who understands systems better than people.

Contact

Press & media: press [at] theofflineyears.com