Literature Festival
“The Breath of Europe” 15th Anniversary Edition
From 3rd to 9th October 2022
The LITERATURE FESTIVAL RUSE has established itself as one of the most relevant events for the Bulgarian and international audience in Bulgaria. It presents current aspects of international and local literature and art, presenting them in an accessible form for all ages.
This year, the 15th anniversary of the festival, “The Breath of Europe” showcases parallel, possible and impossible worlds in contemporary reality. Focusing on Bulgarian authors writing in Bulgarian at home and abroad, the festival will be a place where Bulgarian and world literature meet, complement and enrich one another. This way, the literature festival becomes a platform for knowledge where new forms of mediation are also being experimented with.
The festival will also offer a space for children who love books.
3rd October
17:00
Canetti House
Exhibition and Graphic Novel
On a Thread. 1968. A True Story
The graphic novel “On a Thread. 1968. A True Story”, published by Kibea in 2021 and an exhibition of panels displaying illustrations from the book are presented in the framework of the International Literature Festival Ruse.
The author Vesselin Pramatarov introduces us to the political situation in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s.
For Pramatarov and Bulgarian comics as a whole, this is the first politically engaged graphic novel. During the preparing research, Vesselin Pramatarov got acquainted with a number of publications and articles describing the dynamic period in 1968 and talked several times with Alexander Dimitrov, the only survivor of the three protesters.
The project has been nominated for several prestigious Bulgarian awards and won the Impression Shop Award at Sofia Comics Expo 2022 at the Union of Bulgarian Artists.
The publication is a joint effort of
Czech Centre Sofia, Embassy of the Czech Republic in Sofia,
Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Sofia, Telenor Bulgaria, the Representation of the
KIBEA Publishing House.
Media partners of the project are:
Hristo Botev Programme of the Bulgarian National Radio, Literaturen Vestnik, the media
Literary magazine, the Literary magazine “I Read” and Въпреки.com.
More information about the graphic novel project and the exhibition can be found at: https://sofia.czechcentres.cz/bg/news-komiks
3rd October
18:00
Canetti House
Presentation of the innovative social network for creative minds: Panodyssey
The Business Support Centre for Small and Medium Enterprises in Ruse (https://bscsme.eu/), an NGO with over 26 years of history in supporting businesses at regional and national level, presents a new international social network that gives professional and non-professional writers, journalists, bloggers, editors, translators, illustrators and others a chance to publish their work, profit from it and work as a team.
In recent years, social media has changed the way creators share content with their audiences while allowing new talent to shine, especially in the music and video industries. And writers can now turn to Panodyssey as their personalized social network – serving authors and their readers.
Panodyssey.com unites writers and readers around shared values that align ethics and the digital world. The platform prevents anonymous postings and provides a platform for authors to hone their creative writing skills through new formats while guaranteeing their copyright.
The initiative is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program within the CREA project.
3rd October
18:15
Canetti House
Sasko Nasev is a Macedonian writer and dramaturgist, born in Kochani in 1966. He studied general and comparative literature at the Faculty of Philology of Skopje and dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Skopje, where he attained a PhD. He specialized in the USA as well. Nasev was the editor of the cultural section of the newspaper “Student’s Word” and a contributor to Macedonian Television. He is a professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
Sasko Nasev is one of the most productive Macedonian writers, the author of a long list of plays, writing scripts for TV movies, TV series and cinema films. Many of his plays are highly successful and are performed on theatre stages throughout the Republic of North Macedonia and the world. In 2018, he became the Executive Director of the Cultural Information Center of North Macedonia in Sofia.
“Encounters with the Devil”
“Encounters with the Devil”, Macedonian writer Sasko Nasev’s latest book, is a modern, Balkan version of the motif of selling one’s soul to the devil and corresponds with Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”, fitting into the tradition of urban magical realism. A young journalist is seduced by the promises of the devil’s grandson – to have the beautiful Margarita, to succeed in his profession, to travel the world. But after the pleasant thrill passes, comes the moment when everything good must be paid for…
4th October
17:00
Canetti House
Silvia Tomova, born 1973 in Sofia, graduated in “Defectology” and “Journalism” at Sofia University. She has publications in various newspapers.
Her first book, the novel “Skin”, was published in 2001, followed by the collections of short stories “Good Day, R.” (2006) and “Black Olives and Two Men” (2010), and the novel “Titus of Nicomedia” (2012).
In 2007 she received the First Prize of the National Short Story Competition “Rashko Sugarev”. She was awarded the Book of the Year prize by the Liber Academy (2010). Her short stories have been translated into Croatian, Polish and Belarusian.
“The Long Summer of Eternity”
“And one shouldn’t jump to conclusions in the middle of the road. Unless you are certain, and certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you have lost the battle, then it is quite possible that the battle never even began. The end of life is a good benchmark, but if you look at the world from your perspective. I, on the other hand, am telling you that the battle continues beyond. And that you have understood nothing of the game of watchmen and robbers, love and hate, rise and fall, hope and disappointment, wealth and poverty.”
4th October
18:00
Canetti House
Presentation of Marin Bodakov’s book “She has Not Yet Perished… Conversations of Marin Bodakov with Polish Intellectuals” (published by Faber, Foreword: Prof. Pravda Spasova, Veliko Tarnovo, 2021).
With the participation of Prof. Pravda Spasova.
“Polish culture is traditionally highly valued in our country, especially in the field of literature. The European spirit, freedom, topical themes and contemporary poetics were a breath of fresh air during socialism and afterwards. Marin Bodakov’s choice to do the interviews with Polish intellectuals collected in this book is not only the result of his journalistic work in the newspaper “Kultura”. It is a conscious civilizational choice of spiritual belonging to the rich Polish culture and a desire for it to receive a wide response. Poets such as Ryszard Krynicki, Ewa Lipska, Adam Zagajewski, writers such as Olga Tokarczuk, writers and intellectuals such as Zygmunt Bauman, Andrzej Hwalba, Michał Ruszynek, Danuta Wałęsa, Andrzej Franaszek, Irena Gruzdynska-Gross, Marek Bienczyk, Krystyna Stronczek, Marcin Jaworski and Wojciech Galonska are the contributors to this collection of interviews with Marin Bodakov as the main character. Because the choice is always personal and sets a direction”.
Sylvia Choleva for “She has Not Yet Perished… Conversations of Marin Bodakov with Polish intellectuals”.
In September 2021, the Polish Institute lost a dear friend, admirer and connoisseur of Polish prose and poetry. Marin Bodakov was with us all these years – as a curious journalist who asked many questions to the Institute’s literary guests, as a critic who presented new translations of the most interesting Polish authors in an engaging and loving way, as our friend. The book that we prepared together remained unfinished. We are happy that with the help of Neiko Genchev, director of Faber Publishing House, and Sylvia Choleva, it saw the light of day. This is our way of paying tribute and remembering Marin Bodakov.
Prof. Pravda Spasova is the author of the foreword to the book (by invitation of Marin Bodakov). She is a long-term professor in the Department of Psychology of Art, Art Education and General Education, discipline of Philosophy and holds a Doctor of Philosophy.
4th October
19:00
Canetti House
Gyorgy Dragoman is a prominent figure in contemporary Hungarian literature, his worldwide fame is due to his second novel “The White King” (2005), for which he is also known to Bulgarian readers. His literary successes began with “The Book of Desolation” (2002). The novel “Klada” (2014) is his third monumental novel. Dragoman is the author of the short story collection “A Chorus of Lions” (2015), translates fiction from the English, and is involved in literary and film criticism. He was born in 1973 in Targu Mures (Marosvasarhei), Romania. His family moved to live permanently in Hungary in 1988. As a graduate of Budapest’s Lorand Jotvios University, he studied English philology, attained his PhD in philological sciences, and has won several Hungarian and international prestigious awards for his writing. The novel “The White King”, considered a masterpiece and a great achievement of Hungarian literature worldwide, was made into a feature film, a British production. Gyorgy Dragoman’s works have been translated into over thirty languages.
Gyorgy Dragoman: “Klada”, translated from Hungarian by Adriana Petkova, artist: Andrea Popjordanova, 2017, Ergo Publishing House, 424 pp.
“Klada” ist the story of a thirteen-year-old girl in an unnamed town, in an unnamed Eastern European country, who remains an orphan. This coincides with the period of the collapse of the dictatorship from which the whole family suffered. Her grandmother finds her in the orphanage and takes her with her. The heroine’s everyday life is filled with fantasy and ordinary dreams, with adolescent mishaps, the first love and a longing for a happy and peaceful life. The novel is a story of our modern times that raises the question of personal responsibility in the totalitarian society we seemingly rid ourselves of at the end of the last century, as well as in the new society we are rushing to join. Memory or oblivion, forgiveness or revenge for meanness and cruelty, for servility and subservience under dictatorship? Questions that excite all those who have empathized with the changes of the last thirty years, presented through the eyes of a child, through the magical gift of a grandmother to create good when there’s seemingly only evil.
Adriana Petkova Papadopoulos
Born in Sofia. Graduated from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (1983), majoring in history and philosophy, with a three-year scientific specialization in ethnography. After working as a high school teacher in Sofia, she moved to Hungary with her family (1988), where she specialized in Economics and Organization of Tourism and Hospitality and worked at the Bulgarian-Hungarian Secondary Language School “Hristo Botev” as a teacher of tour guiding and tourism. She is intensively engaged in ethnographic research of the contemporary Bulgarian community in Hungary. Collaborator and member of the editorial boards of the local editions of “Bulgarian News” (1992-2001), “Hemus” (1992-2001) and founder of the Bulgarian Cultural Forum (1999) – a society of Bulgarian creative intellectuals in Hungary. She graduated in Budapest with a master’s degree in Hungarian translation and simultaneous translation. Since 2004 she has been working with Russian, Hungarian and English as a freelance translator. Awarded with the Ministry of Culture Award (2006).
In her independent translation, the Bulgarian audience got acquainted with the works of Hungarian writers János Lackfi and Tamás Ijas, Szilard Rubin , Gyorgy Dragoman, Pal Zavada “Market Day” and others.
5th October
18:00
Canetti House
Rayna Breuer was born in 1983 in Burgas. She moved with her family to Potsdam (East Germany), describing her childhood as a “travelling circus”, but from today’s point of view she “wouldn’t trade it for the world”. After Burgas and Potsdam came Sofia, Bonn and Zagreb – some of the stops in her life making the border between East and West fade in her eyes as she tried to overcome language barriers and an entire region became her home. Breuer currently lives in Bonn. She studied politics in Germany and the UK, as well as law in Austria. She has worked for various international organizations. She currently works as a multimedia journalist for various media outlets, such as Deutsche Welle.
Block 317 (Platte 317)
The novel begins as communism in Bulgaria is ending. For the residents of Block 317 in the capital’s Nadezhda district, the world collapses overnight – and not everyone can cope with the new order. Take for instance Mitko, a neighbor on the fifth floor, who is stacking his jars in the basement for the winter just as the upheaval begins. As a convinced communist, he decides to stay there and wait for the return of communism. Every morning before school starts, he calls 13-year-old Vjara from the 8th floor window and tells her not to let the new political wind blow her away. Mitko’s wife, Stanka, has lost hope that her beloved communist will come out of the basement and share the family bed. Instead, she decides to sell “the past” to Western tourists. Her plan works – and she falls for the charms of capitalism, until Mitko finds out about it…
5th October
19:00
Canetti House
Petar Chouhov, born in 1961 in Sofia, is the author of 13 poetry books, 3 books of prose and a children’s book. His work has been translated into 20 languages and published in over 20 countries. He has won many awards, including the Basho Museum Award in Japan. He has participated in festivals and readings all over the world.
He writes music and lyrics, playing in various rock bands. Member of the Board of the Bulgarian P.E.N.-Center, Bulgarian Writers Association, Haiku Club “Sofia”, Haiku Society of America, World Haiku Association and Music author. In 2021 his newest poetry collections was published – “Autumn Easter” and “Zapokitennost” (including his first five poetry books).
“Autumn Easter” by Petar Chouhov
“There is no one else in the Bulgarian poetry of the early 21st century who’s handwriting so carefully works at turning everyday sights and situations into meaningful chasms and heights. Chouhov domesticates the world by transforming it along the entire vertical of possible meanings.
Whether climbing up (to God) or descending down (to Hell), Petar Chouhov knows the way – both require the skills of a mountaineer who, instead of a belay rope, swings mockingly on the rope bridge of poetic irony.”
5th October
20:00
Canetti House
Poems and ethno compositions with Petar Chouhov and Ivan Hristov from the group “Gologan”
Petar Chouhov and Ivan Hristov are poets and musicians, founders of the ethno-rock formation “Gologan” in 2004. For the time of its active existence its members were another poet and musician, Emmanuel A. Vidinsky, the ethnomusicologist and translator Angela Rodel, the bass guitarist Ivan S. Valev, and the drummer Grisha Manikatov.
The formation has made numerous appearances in the country – such as at the Apollonia Arts Festival – as well as in other countries (Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Germany). In 2012 the group ceased to exist, and in 2018 Petar Chouhov and Ivan Hristov restored some of its compositions and released the album of the same name “Gologan”, recorded in 2007. With the album they participated in various festivals and solo events in many places in Bulgaria and abroad (Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, North Macedonia).
Ivan Hristov was born in 1978. In 2002 he graduated in Bulgarian philology at the Sofia University. He holds a PhD in New Bulgarian Literature from the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with a dissertation on “The Sagittarius Circle and the Idea of the Native” (2009) and is a member of the Bulgarian Writers’ Association and the Bulgarian P.E.N.-Centre. He has four books published in Bulgaria and five abroad. Winner of national and international awards, regular participant of festivals in the country and abroad. He was a member of the organizing committee of the international festival “Sofia: Poetics” and is now the director of the international program of the festival “Sofia Metaphors”. Currently he works at the Institute of Literature at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
6th October
18:00
Canetti House
Roman Kissiov – poet, artist and translator of poetry – was born in 1962 in Kazanlak and grew up in Russe. He graduated from the Art High School in his hometown and the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, majoring in painting. He lives in Sofia, working in two fields – poetry and fine art. Solo exhibitions – in Sofia, Vienna, Berlin and Skopje. Participates in group exhibitions in Bulgaria, Italy, RS Macedonia and USA, as well as in international painting workshops. He has illustrated dozens of books by world poets.
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Author of 9 books (8 books of poetry and one book of short stories) and 8 books of poetry in other countries (Romania, Croatia, Serbia, RS Macedonia, India, N. Karabakh). His poems have been translated into 23 languages and published in many countries. He has been included in dozens of international poetry anthologies. He has participated in a number of international writing forums and poetry festivals. He is a member of the Bulgarian P.E.N.-Center, an honorary member of the Writers’ Union of Armenia and a member of the editorial board of the international journal of European and Asian poetry, poetic culture and spirituality “KADO”. His latest book of short stories, “Dreaming and Seeing” (published by Ergo, Sofia), was published in autumn 2021 with the support of the Ministry of Culture.
Dreaming and Seeing
“In his new collection of prose (but not only) miniatures, Roman Kissiov has achieved the clean minimalism of the wise man, without, however, giving up his gift as a poet and artist who can create not only pictures but whole worlds with a few strokes. This is another book by Roman in which he shares his accumulated insights, spiritual experience and wisdom and goes far beyond the artful, beautiful and seductive handling of words. The texts are wonderfully complemented by the drawings of the author, who is also an accomplished artist. “Dreaming and Seeing” is a mature and powerful work, a new step in the growth of a writer who has long since earned a deserved place among the leading contemporary Bulgarian artists whose works are popular not only in this country but also beyond its borders.”
Petar Chouhov
The World of Words
Roman Kissiov’s newest book of poetry, The World of Words (Ergo Publishing, Sofia, 2022), includes 61 selected and new poems, accompanied by 13 of his original black and white photographs, which complement the poems beautifully. The number of poems is no coincidence, as the book is published in the poet’s anniversary year of 2022, shortly after he turns 60 and enters his 61st year. The author has selected poems emblematic of his poetry from previous collections, as well as the best of his new poetry written in recent years. The book is divided into four cycles and is compositionally conceived as a brand new, complete book, so that even the “old” works now sound in a new, even unexpected way.
The publication was made possible with the financial support of the National Culture Fund under the Creative Fellowships program.
7th October
18:00
Canetti House
Lucas Cejpek is an Austrian writer and director, born in 1956 in Vienna. In 1960, he moved to Graz with his parents, where he grew up and passed his matriculation examination in 1975. He then studied German and English at Montclair State College, New Jersey, USA, and from 1976 at the University of Graz, where he attained his doctoral thesis on Robert Musil’s “The Man without Qualities” as a cultural theory in 1982. During his studies he worked at the Forum Stadtpark, and since 1981 he has directed premieres and first performances.
From 1983 to 1999 he was a lecturer at the universities of Graz and Vienna, from 1983 to 1990 he was a permanent freelance contributor to the Austrian Radio Television Organization, ORF, Literature and Radio Drama Department, and since 1990 has lived in Vienna as a freelance writer, director of theatre and radio plays. Cejpek’s works include essays, short stories, radio plays, dramas and novels. His first literary publication was in Manuskripte in 1984. He is known to Bulgarian readers for his novel “Your Wish. A Public Novel” (1996), translated into Bulgarian by Alexandrina Leonidova, 2000
Encirclement (Umkreisung)
“Encirclement is a novel without a narrative perspective, without a point of view. After two conceptual books, Disruption. Burn Gretchen (2014) and White Field. An Experience on Myself (2017) I return to the novel with a figure as a point of departure for different explorations. I call it Iris like the feather plant and the iris or aperture of the eye. For the photographic gaze, the rule applies: the smaller the lens, the greater the clarity of the picture. The novel exposure time is unlimited. Iris is the name of a Greek goddess who carries messages from the gods: the rainbow was seen as the link between heaven and earth.
The encirclement is used to set a variety of tones or narrative styles, from reportage to list poems. The starting points are everyday stories that the first-person narrator loads with meaning by constantly making new connections to other things.
In the process, an urban novel emerges; intersecting paths to real places run through Vienna: museums and libraries, galleries and places to visit. And so the tours lead to a center – Vienna as the center of an obsession/mania, which in turn finds a superlative analogue in the starry sky. In this way, the multiple center breaks down, for as Copernicus wrote in 1510, “The center of all heavenly bodies is not one.”
7th October
19:00
Canetti House
Tom Schulz was born on 18 August 1970 in Grossersdorf/Oberlausitz near Dresden and grew up in East Berlin. He published his first poems in 1989. In 1997 his first volume of poetry, Städte, geräumt, appeared in the Laufschrift. Since 1992 he has published in various literary magazines such as ndl, Akzente, Manuskripte, Bellatriste, Edit, Wespennest and many others. From 1991 to 2001 he worked in the construction industry in various companies. Since 2002 he has been working as a freelance writer in the field of poetry, prose and transcriptions. He is co-editor of the Pub Book series (with Björn Kuhligk) at the Berliner Taschenbuchverlag and editor of the anthology: Alles außer Tiernahrung – Neue Politische Gedichte (Rotbuch, Berlin, 2009). He moved to Augsburg in 2007 and has lived in Berlin again since 2011. He is a lecturer at workshops on creative writing and poetry at the University of Augsburg and elsewhere. From 2011 to 2014 he led the “open poems” writing workshop at Literaturwerkstatt Berlin.
Reisewarnung für Länder Meere Eisberge. Gedichte.
(Travel warning for Countries Oceans Ice Bergs. Poems) – political poetic counterpoints
“Open your eyes / says the poem, it always speaks of something more than the present,” we read at the very beginning of Tom Schultz’s collection of poems, Travel warning of Countries Oceans Icebergs. It becomes clear that all the texts in the poetry collection refer to the present. At the same time, however, these poems show us that the present and its judgments, condemnations, and rejections thematized in the poems must be considered in a broader context. In a causal context that includes both pre-history and possible post-history.
Die Verlegung der Stolpersteine
(The Relocating of Stumble Stones)
Can time stumble? While in some places it moves fast, it can even afford a car, in other places it moves hard, and there are even places where time is said to have stood still. One can stumble in any case. Sometimes the obstacle is one’s own memory at the sight of the surroundings, and sometimes the impression the surroundings give. In his new poems, Tom Schulz is concerned with the formation of poetic memory. He descends into the “cellars where the horns hang,” climbs to the cherry tree tops, and places memory markers in each layer. In the process, he evokes the phantom memory of legend, mixing his own memories of childhood in the GDR with scenes of Dresden burning and the present of Pegida’s marches. Wherever these poems take us – to Lithuania, Mexico, or to the cows in front of the nuclear power plant – Tom Schultz shows that stumbling, stopping, is a condition for empathetic perception of the world, a condition for its improvement.
7th October
20:00
Canetti House
“СОНЕТЪТ” is a poetic-visual and musical performance inspired by sonnets by Shakespeare, Schlegel, Sidney, John Dunn, Ivan Vazov, Nikolay Liliev, Dimitar Panteleev, Peter Velchev, as well as original sonnets by Martin Pashov and Dimitar Pishev.
The performance is a creative result of the workshop “The Sonnet”, part of the project “Between the Digital and the Real” and led by the director tandem Elitsa Yovcheva and Diana Doseva.
The participants are actors from the troupe of the State Puppet Theatre Ruse – Dimitar Pishev, Svetlina Stancheva, Iveta Marinova, Martin Pashov.
Multimedia – Momchil Mihaylov-Momo | Momchil Mihaylov Studio
The project is realized with the financial support of the National Culture Fund
Partners:
– State Puppet Theatre – Ruse
– MJ “Elias Canetti” – Ruse
– Regional Library “Lyuben Karavelov” – Ruse
As a partner in this project, the Elias Canetti MD provides a basis for the development and presentation of the results of the workshops held in Ruse with actors from the State Puppet Theatre.
8th October
18:00
Canetti House
Alexandra Ivoylova is a musician, artist and writer, intertwining those disciplines in her work. She also stands on the critics’ side – with reviews of exhibitions, books, music events, etc.
She graduated in piano at the National Academy of Music “Pancho Vladigerov”, specialized in Paris and studied chamber singing. Her artistic manifestations are realized in solo art and photography exhibitions, recitals, collaborative performances, and the variations of the interweaving of the arts are various. She participates in the plein-air exhibitions of the Savchevi Gallery, Oryahovo, in the exhibitions and plein-airs of Jewish artists in Bulgaria, in the exhibitions of the Bulgarian Haiku Union. Author and co-author of more than ten books. Compiler of international haiku anthologies.
Member of the Bulgarian PEN Centre, the International Elias Canetti Society, the Union of Bulgarian Journalists, the World Haiku Association (Japan), Europoesie – UNICEF, etc. She is a member of the editorial board of Haiku World magazine.
Alexandra Ivoylova – Photo haiga exhibition “Reflections” and poetry recital
The art of haiga has its origins in ancient Japan (hai – playful, ga – drawing). In the most general sense, haiga is a painting related to the aesthetics and poetics of haiku (in the classical period, mostly ink drawing; today, it has become a worldwide phenomenon – with various interpretations and new representational techniques: photography, computer graphics, collage, etc.). The unique combination of two means of expression (image and haiku verse) in one work stirs the associative experience, once evoked by the visual image, once by the word – and ultimately by the interweaving of the two, which complement each other, hinting at each other without overlapping.
Through the synthetic language of haiga, Alexandra Ivoylova’s exhibition shows details that bring the wonder of the moment close to us, captured by the lens in angles through which they acquire a new, sometimes unexpected meaning, seen and felt through the prism of the author’s sensitivity.
8th October
19:00
Canetti House
Robert Levy was born 1964 in Sofia. He holds a Master’s degree in Bulgarian Philology (1995, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”) and in Cultural and Social Anthropology (1998, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”). He was active in many professions, including construction worker, EIM operator, secretary of a foundation, scriptwriter of documentary films (more than 50 titles, including those broadcast on BNT; the film presenting Sofia in the EP on the day of Bulgaria’s accession to the EU was based on his script), or warehouse worker. He currently lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and works as a stage hand. Robert Levy is the author of the books One from the Top of the Needle (Sofia, R § R, 1999), Babylon (Sofia, Bulgarian Writer, 2006), Dromomachia (Sofia, Lexikon, 2017).
His latest book “Anemoia” (Sofia, “Lexikon”, 2020) was nominated for the “Ivan Nikolov” award and won second place at the “Ivan Peychev” competition. Together with Antonia Apostolova, he is the translator of the poetry collection by the Israeli poet Amir Or, The Language Says, Sofia, DA Poetry Publishing House, 2017. In 2006, Robert recorded with his band “Bad Comrades” the album “Neon”, in which he wrote the music and lyrics and which won him the national POCI award for original song. In addition, Robert Levy has authored a number of scholarly articles published in reference publications. Until leaving Bulgaria, Robert Levy was the organizer and permanent host of the literary formats “Poets in the Frame” and “Poetry Mondays at the Delta Blues bar”, during which he met the Sofia and Plovdiv audience with more than 30 established and young poets and writers.
ANEMOIA
A book by an incorrigible romantic who thinks through music, muses through the Old Testament and bequeaths to the next generations who will hitchhike to the sea, never to betray their freedom, however lonely it may be. Philosophical and friendly, profound and uplifting poetry.
“Anemoia” means “nostalgia for a time you didn’t live in.” And what’s the word for “a time you haven’t left, no matter how long ago it locked itself away from the world?” – Christine Dimitrova
9th October
11:00
Canetti House
Yavor Tsanev was born in Ruse. He is the owner of the publishing house “Gayana” and the author of several short story collections, poetry collections and two children’s novels. He has won numerous national awards for fiction. Since 2012 he has been publishing the fiction, horror and crime magazine Drakus.
The novel “Silver and the Vampires” (published by Gayana) is included in the prestigious White Ravens publishing catalogue of the International Children’s and Young Adult Library in Munich.
Silver is the little kitten with silver fur that Maya and Alex find in the countryside and bring home to the city. One year later, during the holidays, they return to their grandmother and most unexpectedly a series of terrifying adventures happen to them. The children discover how extraordinary their pet really is, learn the legends of the village and make important decisions just like adults.
The novel “Zlostori” published by “Gornata Zemlya”) won the Children’s Jury Award at the National Children’s Book Festival – Sliven in 2019.
Ghost, spirit or human?
The old house does not answer. It seems empty, but at midnight mysterious lights float through it.
Who can resist this mystery? No one!
Simeon and Danny even less. The boys are searching for answers and Hissing’s house attracts them. Who is the Hissing Man? Everyone says he’s just a bogeyman…
9th October
18:00
Canetti House
Peter Denchev is a Bulgarian writer and theatre director. He graduated in Directing for Drama Theatre at NATFA “Krastyo Sarafov” in 2010 and attained a Master’s degree in Theatre Art in 2017. With his novel “As a Man Kisses a Woman He Loves” he won the competition „Развитие” in 2007. Later he published the short story collection Stories in Past Time (2010, Janet 45 Publishing House) and the novel The Quiet Sun (2012, Janet 45 Publishing House). His novels The Little God of the Earthquake (2019, Janet 45 Publishing House) and Rewind (2021, Janet 45 Publishing House) have been nominated for the Helicon Prize (2019, 2021). His works have been translated into Serbian, Macedonian, Slovenian, German, English and Farsi.
He has staged plays on the stages of most of the major theatres in Bulgaria (Ivan Vazov National Theatre, Aleko Konstantinov Satirical Theatre, Stoyan Bachvarov State Theatre Varna, Sava Ognyanov State Theatre Ruse, Geo Milev State Theatre Stara Zagora, etc.). In the period 2017-2018 he was the dramaturgist of the Stoyan Bachvarov State Theatre Varna. In the theatre he has worked on texts by authors such as Edward Albee, Jordi Galceran, Sarah Ruhl, Shakespeare or Moliere. His performances have appeared at various festivals and forums in Serbia, Romania, Kosovo and Montenegro.
Rewind
Maria Ivanova watches as shorebirds tear apart her old body. From that moment on, she begins a new life with her 20-something body. Driven by Mala’s ordeal, Maria serves out her transitional years and gets a chance at a new life. And when she fails (in the midst of a dizzying political career), the new body quickly collapses with the utter desolation of old age. In his new creative explorations, Peter Denchev unfolds an intriguingly contemporary moral. It is an extremely difficult, hard-fought attempt to look at the essence of the contemporary, of our life here and now, with traces of its moral foundations. And – above all – with the experience of death as the omnipresent and implacable arbiter, but also as the shaper of the human.
Peter Denchev’s experience is of particular value for the way in which the singular, the automatized in the process of living and everyday stereotypes are generalized to the problems of existence. Alongside this, Rewind shows how the psychosomatic fossils of human behaviour have not just their own history and internal motivation, but also their own ‘circular’ inheritance.
Boris Minkov
9th October
19:00
Canetti House
Ivaila Alexandrova graduated from Sofia University, majoring in Journalism in 1977, and specialized in Film Studies at NATFA in 1983. She is a long-time editor and author in the “Kultura” editorial office of the Bulgarian National Radio. Host of the programs “In the World of Cinema”, “In the Spotlight”, “ArtEfir”, with the main theme Bulgarian cinema. Her publications on “Bulgarian cinema” have been printed on the pages of the newspaper. “Standard”, “Literaturen Vestnik”, etc. Author of radio documentaries and television programmes.
n 2008, her documentary novel “Hot Red” was published, which sparked stormy discussions and won a series of the most prestigious Bulgarian and European awards, such as the Elias Canetti Award and the Union of Bulgarian Journalists Award, she was also nominated for the „Христо Г. Данов”. She has been awarded the Danov Award, presented in Vienna, in Berlin at the 10th International Literary Festival, at a scientific forum at the Literaturhaus in Berlin, at the European Commission, also in Brussels. The documentary “Vaptsarov. Five Tales of a Shooting” received the award Златен ритон and the Best Documentary Award at the Annual Awards of the Bulgarian Film Academy.
Picture description: The network that Nikola Geshev, the head of department “A” in the Police Directorate, formed while conducting the interrogations.
Case No. 585. Inquiry on a shooting
A book about the murder of Vaptsarov, but also about the whole Case No. 585, the details of which have remained unknown for 80 years. What exactly happened is revealed by Ivaila Alexandrova based on documents hidden until 2011.