Amelia Licheva
Amelia Licheva is a poet and literary critic. She is Professor of Literary Theory at Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski. She is the author of numerous theoretical and poetic books. She is the editor-in-chief of the Literary Journal. Chairman of PEN Centre – Bulgaria. Her poems have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Slovak, Croatian, Hungarian, Greek, Arabic.
As a country of the former Eastern Bloc and as a part of Eastern Europe today, Bulgaria is a rather unpopular destination. Many people around the world associate it with the former communist countries and as of today – with a lower living standard, even though it is a Member State of the European Union. And while it may take time to counteract these stereotypes, some achievements in sport and opera singing quickly attract and excite public attention. For years on end, Bulgaria has been associated with the name of the football player Hristo Stoichkov; nowadays, other evident Bulgarian emissaries are the tennis player Grigor Dimitrov, the opera singer Sonya Yoncheva and the actress Maria Bakalova. However, a few months ago Bulgaria joined the world stage by virtue of its literature. The International Booker Prize 2023 was won by Georgi Gospodinov, an acclaimed Bulgarian author, winner of many international awards, whose works have been translated into almost every European language. Gospodinov authored Time Shelter, The Physics of Sorrow and Natural Novel, as well as poetry collections, essays and literary criticism books of high literary merit. His latest novel Time Shelter describes the passage of time from a personal standpoint and the ways through which a person copes (or does not cope) with the past, but it is also a ‘dystopia’ of Europe itself – Europe overwhelmed by nostalgia, by urges to replace the future with the past and by attempts to change and rewrite biographies. Georgi Gospodinov’s works have been received extremely favorably by notable foreign authors and literary critics such as Olga Tokarczuk, Leïla Slimani, Miljenko Jergović and Jean-Luc Nancy.
The topic of the continent’s past, but more specifically of Bulgaria itself, is focal not only in Georgi Gospodinov’s widely-acclaimed novel, but also in modern Bulgarian literature as a whole. Many of the best-known authors try to rethink the totalitarian regime, to provide explanations how communism functioned and to outline what Bulgaria’s fate would have been, if a communist regime had not been established at all. Among the leading names in this trend are authors like Theodora Dimova and Alek Popov. We can, of course, go further and name also authors who attempt to rethink the Bulgarian past in principle, drawing from important historical events. This results in novels whose plots are based on facts and sometimes include real-life historical figures, without being documentaries per se. The most notable figures in this tradition are the authors Milen Ruskov and Hristo Karastoyanov.
Another key topic in modern Bulgarian fiction is the narrative of the present. The years after the fall of communism in Bulgaria are known as the ‘transition’, e.g. the period of initial accumulation of capital during which the so-called ‘mutri’ – mostly newly-rich mobsters – first appeared. Centering the plot on these types of transformations, exploring the role of media in society and more specifically focusing on the topics of money, power and corruptibility are characteristics of the works of authors like Zahary Karabashliev, Vladimir Zarev, Zdravka Evtimova, Kristin Dimitrova and Georgi Tenev.
The genre of the short story has also flourished in recent decades. The short story is an example of the good tradition of urban fiction; it enlivens notable urban settings, tells stories of ‘places of memory’ (Pierre Nora), touches upon the topic of ecology and includes dystopian elements. Among the masters in this genre are authors like Deyan Enev and Elena Alexieva, as well as the abovementioned Georgi Gospodinov, Zdravka Evtimov and Kristin Dimitrova.
One of the ‘niches’ of modern Bulgarian literature is ‘women’s’ writing, which is associated with topics such as violence against women, mother–daughter relationships, the female body, as well as with a writing style akin to the stream of consciousness. Notable names here are Emiliya Dvoryanova, Maria Stankova and Theodora Dimova. Another example is the type of literature that tries to rethink biblical stories in an attempt to bring Bulgarian literature closer to the Christian tradition.
Poetry has been flourishing constantly during these years. At the beginning of the 1990s, the most widespread literary trends were those related to developing the so-called ‘learned writing’, characteristic of High Modernism. Among the most vocal voices are those of Georgi Rupchev, Vladimir Levchev and Ilko Dimitrov. However, there was no shortage of postmodernist experiments – play with tradition, rewriting the classics, experiments with form, language, punctuation – Ani Ilkov, Georgi Gospodinov, Plamen Doynov, Yordan Eftimov and Boyko Penchev. Women’s poetry was also particularly powerful; it stood up for the rights of women writers to a different voice and thematic scope, encompassing the complex relationships with men, the introspection, the topic of motherhood and of freedom, too. Notable authors are Miglena Nikolchina, Silvia Choleva, Virginia Zaharieva, Kristin Dimitrova, Amelia Licheva and Nadezhda Radulova. Again during this period, political poetry established itself; it supported the idea of the intellectual as a speaker of truth and freedom. During the new century, it was attempted to develop political plots into political poetry, including the topics of talebearing and treason that marked the communist regime. Among the names working in this direction are Blaga Dimitrova, Edvin Sugarev, Ani Ilkov and Plamen Doynov. Short forms influenced by the haiku genre also gained popularity. Ivan Metodiev was instrumental in their introduction. One of the masters of the short, topical and ironic poetry is Petar Tchouhov.
However, Bulgarian literature today is not written solely into the Bulgarian language. It includes many successful authors around the world who write into other languages and are part of other national literatures. Most of them are foreign authors of Bulgarian origin like Ilija Trojanow, Dimitré Dinev, Kapka Kassabova, Miroslav Penkov, Ruzha Lazarova and Elitsa Georgieva. Many of them write about Bulgaria, their childhood memories and the totalitarian past. Others, like Miroslav Penkov, try to represent the Bulgarian as exotic, imbuing it with mythological significance and Balkan eccentricity.
The visibility of Bulgarian literature abroad is enhanced by the Translation Programme operating under the Ministry of Cultures that supports the publishing of works of Bulgarian authors in foreign countries, as well as by the International Book Fair and the Sofia International Literary Festival, which bring together Bulgarian writers and their world-famous colleagues from all over the world.
