The inaugural Sofia International Literary Festival is underway in the Bulgarian capital, comprising literary participants from Bulgaria and Balkan countries from December 10 – 15. Among the many writers in attendance are Bulgaria’s Georgi Gospodinov, Kristin Dimitrova, Miroslav Penkov and Milen Ruskov; Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Macedonia’s Goce Smilevski, Croatia’s Ante Tomić and Romania’s Dan Lungu […]
“Those are just rungs, you poor people, rungs in the pecking order; I scaled them carefully, on my guard, one at a time, onwards towards the top. Push down whoever is beneath you, lick the heels of whoever is above, lick until he stumbles, then see him down, and you can continue one rung further […]
The most recent work in B O D Y’s Saturday European Fiction was “Scribbles” by Macedonian writer Rumena Bužarovska, while a month earlier there was a story by another Macedonian writer, Ivan Dodovski, who has another work forthcoming in the magazine. Macedonia is a country of just over two million people but has its share […]
“The pens… the pencils… the paper… look… I’ve been writing,” I said to him, taking my wet hands out of the fridge again. Water began to drip onto the mess of paper on the kitchen bench. “What are these squiggles? What on earth have you been doing?” He started to grab my little hurricanes and […]
The latest story in B O D Y’s Sunday European Fiction, the Macedonian “Artist of the Revolution” (as well as next week’s Russian story) was translated by Berlin-based translator Will Firth. Below is an interview in which Firth talks about the various languages he translates from, the difficulties of breaking into the right translating circles […]
“They’ll never understand my love,” Marko Redstarski told his two friends one afternoon. “I understand you entirely,” the journalist said. “Me too,” the musician nodded. “And they think I’m practicing sabotage!” the artist went on. “They want to rob the revolution of its charm, its beauty and mysticism, its solemnity…” This bit of dialogue comes […]
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