Anita Kurimay. Queer Budapest, 1873–1961 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 326.

standing of identity and community fueled discussions of ethnic and linguistic differences within the Bulgarian Muslim community, especially between ethnic Turks and Tatars. At the same time, Methodieva points out that Bulgarian Muslims demonstrated solidarity with other Muslim communities in a global context. They were particularly interested in the fate of Muslims in Habsburg Bosnia and the Crimean Tatars in the Russian Empire, with whom they shared the experience of being Muslim minorities. Between Empire and Nation is a well-written and thoroughly researched history of Bulgaria’s Muslim community between 1878 and 1908, the period from the emergence of Bulgaria as a nation-state under Ottoman suzerainty to its formal independence. Its main strength is its basis on a careful analysis of Ottoman and Bulgarian archival documents and printed source material, with a specific focus on the writings of Muslim reform activists. Methodieva’s approach achieves its goal of highlighting the voices and experiences of Bulgaria’s Muslims and portraying them as active agents of political and social change. She vividly illustrates how Bulgaria’s Muslims, a minority that enjoyed equal civil rights on paper but nevertheless encountered exclusion and discrimination in practice, found their place in the new Bulgarian state. More importantly, she demonstrates that Bulgaria’s Muslim community was not a homogeneous bloc but consisted of various ethnic and linguistic groups with different ideas and loyalties. Although ostensibly focused on political activists and personalities, Methodieva also considers the situation of marginalized groups, such as women, Muslim Roma, and Pomaks (Bulgarian-speaking Muslims). The result of her efforts is a convincing case for the importance of situating Muslim reform movements and political activism in their specific local contexts, which she accomplishes through her comprehensive account of the political, social, and demographic circumstances in which Bulgaria’s Muslims lived during the period under study. Ideally, the work’s focus on the Bulgarian context could also have been emphasized in its title, which simply refers to Muslim reform in the Balkans. Some other limitations to the otherwise excellent study include its focus on political activists and personalities, with comparatively little attention paid to the everyday experiences of “ordinary” people or the functioning of Islamic religious structures within Bulgarian state structures. Nevertheless, the author’s meticulous research provides a valuable contribution to the study of Muslim communities in Bulgaria and the broader post-Ottoman context. The readable and well-structured work is a valuable resource for historians and others interested in Muslim reformism and minority studies.