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Search Results: bulgarian literature

Interviews |

That Tar-Black Taste: An Interview with Vladislav Todorov

by Steven Wingate

…public reflex. Does Zift point toward any particular precedents outside of Bulgarian literature? I wrote Zift as an indirect tribute to James Cain‘s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. In these novels the narrator confesses to his crimes. I find Cain’s books much more interesting than Hammett’s or Chandler’s, wherein a private eye narrates while trying to crack a case. The criminal narrator is decidedly more fascinating than the p…


Interviews |

All Times are Awake at Once: An Interview with Angel Igov

by Steven Wingate

…e live in an ahistorical age and people care less and less about the past. Literature, however, cultivates the awareness that it’s somewhat unhealthy to live in the present only. For Bulgarians, indeed, history has traditionally been quite important. As a young nation, Bulgaria constructed its identity through the tales of the glorious medieval past and the fainter echoes of Thracian antiquity. This is why, even as I call it a young nation, most B…


Interviews |

Interview with Travis Holland, The Archivist’s Story

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

…h. The architecture of this novel is the idea that I just laid out of what literature is. Literature is the breath—Babel’s breath—on the glass. Literature is that breath, that fog. It is the proof that life was there. This was something I came to realize that was there all along. The idea that I could pick him [Babel’s stories] up and feel the life of this human being or these characters on the page and then have to realize that he was gone and th…


Reviews |

Everything Happens As It Does, by Albena Stambolova

by Steven Wingate

…ibility to the body of English translations from her nation’s contemporary literature. While the men show some concern for what being a Bulgarian means, what Bulgaria as a nation means (or, in the case of Ruskov, what civilization itself means), Stambolova tells sinuous tales that snake through the lives of her characters, leaving the reader feeling privy to those deeply personal moments in which life make perfect emotional sense—even as it makes…


Shop Talk |

Connecting the Dots: International Lit and Collaboration in Bulgaria

by Steven Wingate

…aborative projects emerge, and the next year’s hatch. The lines connecting Bulgarian literature to the Anglophone world darken and strengthen, and as they do more lines of alliance appear. It’s fun to tell stories where the good guys win, and this is one of them. This annual gathering is creating a nexus where there was none before, and it’s immensely gratifying to be even a small part of it. Further Reading Read Part I of a collage essay on the 2…


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: Everything Happens As It Does

by The Editors

…ibility to the body of English translations from her nation’s contemporary literature. While the men show some concern for what being a Bulgarian means, what Bulgaria as a nation means (or, in the case of Milen Ruskov, what civilization itself means), Stambolova tells sinuous tales that snake through the lives of her characters, leaving the reader feeling privy to those deeply personal moments in which life make perfect emotional sense—even as it…


Shop Talk |

Reminder: Sozopol Fiction Seminar Deadline February 15th

by The Editors

…is one of the most prominent living Bulgarian poets. He currently teaches Bulgarian literature and Creative writing at Sofia University Ilija Trojanow (BG/Germany) is a writer, translator and publisher. Among other awards, he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his novel The Collector of Worlds in 2006 Rana Dasgupta (UK) is a British-Indian award winning novelist, author of Tokyo Canceled and Solo. In 2009 he won the Commonwealth Writers’ Pr…


Interviews |

Characters We Care About: an Interview with Paul Vidich

by Carin Clevidence

…r the consequence of things not said. And secrets have always been part of literature, certainly in Shakespeare, where masked identifies drive forward the story in comedy and tragedy. Both in life and literature, secrets often are viewed as socially inappropriate, whereas espionage is a line of work that sanctions lying, deceit, and secrets. Masters of the spy genre play with these layers of secrecy. Secrets are a form of withholding, and the reve…


Interviews |

“Plot is a Blueprint of Human Behavior”: An Interview with Natalie Bakopoulos

by Bistra Velichkova

…he thing that most impressed you about spending time in Bulgaria and about Bulgarians? What kind of differences in mentality did you find between Bulgarians and Americans? I love so many things about the country. I love the way the language sounds. And because my father’s Greek and my mother is Ukrainian, I felt very comfortable in the culture. What I also like about Bulgaria is that it is very much Balkan, in a good way. People don’t really care…


Shop Talk |

2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminars Application Deadline March 7th

by The Editors

…S), and Krassimir Damianov (BG/ES) from May 24 – 30 for a week centered on literature, translation, and conversations about this year’s theme: “Writing Place.” Special guests include editors Ben George (Ecotone) and Dwayne Hayes (Absinthe: New European Writing), as well as FWR’s own editor-in-chief, Jeremiah Chamberlin, and contributing editor Steven Wingate. Details: Ten scholarships to attend the Sozopol Fiction Seminars will be given to five fi…




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