PICKING LONELINESS just like mushrooms loneliness too has a double poisonous and edible loneliness one bows to you with its red hat the other watches you smiling with polka dots by its blue blood you’ll recognize which one counts your hours Stoyanka Grudova Translation: Katerina Stoykova from the anthology Season of Delicate Hunger (ed. Katerina … Continue reading Stoyanka Grudova: Picking Loneliness
“There are very few people with the capacity to change the world. Jesus Christ was one, Karl Marx was another.” Such thoughtful, meaningful and expressing words to start a novel*: Bulgariana (Dragon Books, revised edition, 2014), featuring Bulgaria’s recent history. Having lived in Turkey for a few years, I encountered in Çorlu, Turkey a few ambitious … Continue reading Randall Baker’s Bulgariana: A Review by Nuri Al-Khalaf
Better for Toni The time I left my best friend behind was a time of hope for something better than a best friend, was a time of hope for true love, was a time of hope for a better life, better than a best friend, better than her true love, better than a life … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: Better
Unfortunately, Danila Stoianova didn't have much time to fully develop her talent as a poet. She died 1984 at the young age of 23 after a long battle with leukemia. This, and a series of deaths in her family left a deep mark on her and one can not read her poems without thinking of … Continue reading Bulgarian Poetry in English Translation III/3: the period 1944-1989 – Danila Stoianova
At the grave of Penyo Penev* I stood in front of the unfinished block, which marks the end of the town. From the one time hill under my feet I just remember the strong wind of dusk - unused to the new echo, it attempts it over again in a cave of concrete, where the … Continue reading Zlatomir Zlatanov: At the grave of Penyo Penev
In March 2018, one of the top news in Bulgaria was the announcement of the "Dossier Commission" that deals with the files of the former communist State Security Services, that Julia Kristeva, the prominent French writer and intellectual of Bulgarian origin has been an agent of the State Security, according to their findings. What followed … Continue reading Hristo Hristov: Kill the Wanderer
Bulgaria’s rural areas have seen a dramatic change in the last decades: the population of many villages is dwindling, a lack of public infrastructure, such as schools, medical services, sometimes even water and electricity supply, but also of jobs have driven many people in the bigger cities or abroad; at the same time Bulgaria’s population … Continue reading Mikhail Veshim: The English Neighbour
In celebration of Pride, June’s “Publisher Spotlight” posts will feature publishers of LGBTQ+ literature in English-language translation. This week, we will explore titles by academic publisher University of Minnesota Press. Since its founding in 1925, University of Minnesota Press has been a beacon of scholarly writing in the humanities and social sciences. Later, literature was … Continue reading Publisher Spotlight: University of Minnesota Press
Iliya Troyanov: The Collector of Worlds (UK: Faber & Faber; US: Ecco) Winner of the 2006 Leipzig Book Prize for Literature Shortlisted for the 2006 German Book Prize Translated from German by William Hobson I knew nothing of the British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, (1821-1890), before reading Bulgarian-born Troyanov’s novel. And so my first … Continue reading Iliya Troyanov’s The Collector of Worlds: A Review by Lizzy Siddal
As soon as you open Alexander Shpatov’s short story collection and read the first story “Experience Sofia”, you know that this author loves his city. He loves it so much that he wants the reader to love it too and – even better – to see it with the eyes of someone who has lived … Continue reading #LiveFromSofia -Short Stories by Alexander Shpatov: A Review by Caroline Couderc
