A Few Words about an Extraordinary Magazine


For a third year now the talented novelist and literary man Georgi Grozdev has published his wonderful creation, the Literary Balkans magazine, an original continuation of what he began with his impressive Balkan Library which includes the works of Ivo Andrich, Giorgos Seferis, Odysseas Elytis and Miroslav Krleza, and many other great literary artists of Balkan prose. The focus of the first edition for 2005 is the modern Macedonian poetry and prose readers will finally have the chance to discover without the false jingoist considerations and complexes. But I was particularly excited about two texts in this considerable volume. One of them is Georgi Grozdev’s essay about Yordan Radichkov, entitled “Literary Farm”, and the other is the extensive last interview with our unforgettable classic of fine letters Ivailo Petrov. A few months ago I enthusiastically read Grozdev’s Prey, one of the best animalistic texts of our modern prose, a creative continuation of the writer’s search in Fierce Attitude and The Tied Balloon. I will never forget Radichkov’s exceptional writings about his late friends Emilian Stanev and Grigor Vachkov. So now Grozdev himself seems to have achieved a similar requiem, in which the master of the tentsi and verblyudi rises to pour in us some of his spiritual power. From the Nothingness that swallowed him returns the creator of Wolf Hunt to smile cunningly and retort, “There is no nation of bad character, only bad conditions it lives under.” Magazines as the Literary Balkans actively cooperate to finally change these conditions, if not into a material, then at least into a spiritual order.

Literary Balkans magazine, volume 1, 2005, Sofia, Publishing House “Balkani”