When looking back, can you clearly see the importance of the Bulgarian book for you?

During my teenage years books were amusement, curiosity, a mystery that later evolved into a vital necessity.

Which books have given you the most and from which books have you been able to take more than you believed it possible?

Bulgarian and foreign books, but most of all the Russian classics. I learned from those authors which I liked.

What is the destiny of fine letters now, and what could this destiny be in the near and in the more distant future?

It is a little “roughed up” or at least that is how it seems to us – a new sensitivity, a new perception of the world, new means of expression. That is all but natural after the long years of our isolation from the world’s literary process. We have to start again at an adult age healing childhood illnesses not only in literature but in arts as a whole, and to hail as innovation, avant-gardism etc. achievements that have been a reality in the outside world for more than half a century. But our literature will soon start marking the pace of the world, which does not mean at all that literary values were not and are not being created in this country.

The cultural crisis of today has its causes and its signs, but it also has a remedy that is basically universal. Perhaps, the purely Bulgarian specifics of this remedy remain out of focus?

It seems to me that there is no all-out cultural crisis in the sense that our spiritual energy is still present. It is the material means for a quick and complete manifestation of culture that are missing. And the remedy for that are both the work and the efforts to avoid converting our culture into a waste dump for foreign garbage.

There are many secrets to a book, and the author’s mastership tends to be among the most obscure. Have you reached a conscious explanation for yourself of everything that you have created – as creative art, besides a pure will, is also the product of the artist’s instincts, of the artist’s enigmatic and mysterious self that he deciphers only partially in his texts to the reader?

Sometimes I feel like somebody else has written my texts. Instinct may well be that “somebody else”.

What has been the major source of hope and belief for you through the years?

The good. My good and the good for all. The will to live happily to reveal life’s secrets and to overcome the terror of death. And a lot of other things.

What is your vision of Bulgaria at the end of the 21st century? What does Time mean to you?

It will be better than now. And Time is nothing but an action. It creates and it destroys. It is the only and impartial judge of our deeds.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the destiny of the Balkans and mankind, and why?

I am a pessimistic optimist, if I may say so. The Balkans have always been a tool for the great powers due to the geographical location of the region. Perhaps the same scheme applies now as well. But regardless of the ironic and offensive epithets foreigners try to stick on us, history has demonstrated in the most conclusive manner that the “powder keg” is the primary source for the aliens’ culture and civilization.

Is there any peculiarity of your character that you freely joke about in public? And does it happen frequently?

You mean what is the flaw in my character that I might joke about in public? Well, these flaws are not one or two, so I am simply incapable of listing them all…

What would you choose – if you had to choose today – between a bag of gold and an eternal book? And what would have been your choice 30 years ago?

Given today’s crisis, I would not only choose the bag of gold – I would opt for even a single golden coin. Thirty years ago I would definitely choose the eternal book.

Do you think that in these times when the path to the reader is difficult and uncertain, new names could emerge? Could the experience with your own public recognition be useful today? How did you gain recognition, was it easy?

I am not certain I have been recognized. And the new names may well be breeding at this very moment. The spirit of a nation is always alive.

Would you disclose your own anthology or collection of names of masters of the prose whom you hold in highest esteem – names from the Bulgarian and world, including Balkan, literature?

They are many, both ours and foreign. It is impossible to make a list without leaving somebody out undeservedly.