Thanks, Liam, for the tips.
I quite agree with Liam that the Bulgarian-language Wikipedia entry comes as if from another world. But my question still stands: why can't they get a Wiki article in the international lingua franca English to spread the word? Because even those of us that know one or two other Slav languages can't altogether get an in-depth idea of what's on that website. Although the list of names helps enormously if you can read Cyrillic. So that and the
Virtualna Biblioteka za B?lgarska Literatura - Avtori are helpful.
One problem is that there is a maddening tendency to write long lists of
undifferentiated names, so that without reading every entry for every writer, you can't instantly distinguish between the worst Socialist Realist r?gime lackey and the most avant-garde postmodernist. A further problem is that even when, on the latter website above, they do supply a few excerpts in English, biographies would also be handy. And especially: overview articles.
The Khadzhikosev article - for literature up to 1918 - looks interesting, assuming you learn Bulgarian over the weekend. Ditto, the
Literaturen Klub. And for those in post-weekend mode, you can then look at the websites of publishers, such as the Colibri one:
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On that website, they sensibly divide books up into "Klassika", "Moderna klassika" and "S?vremenna literatura". And, most importantly for us: "B?lgarska literatura". There are, evidently, 153 names and book descriptions here:
????????? ????? - ???????????? ?????????? - ????? - ??????????? "???????"
And those that have decided to learn Bulgarian will find pleasure at the following webpage which points the way to loads of further literary websites:
litclub friends
Also, those of us that can read German, French and other languages can maybe find translations here and there of modern classic and contemporary Bulgarian authors. Dutch and Swedish are my default languages in this respect.
Anyway, the things that Liam has found do prove without a doubt that Bulgarian literature and bookselling are alive and kicking, and didn't stop at Socialist Realism, as the farcical English-language Wiki article would suggest.
Hey, it might be worth learning Bulgarian, after all. A reading knowledge, at least. Though Mirabell is already demonstrating with these new names that with a knowledge of German, you have further access to Bulgarian literature.
