The teacher of Bulgarian language and literature, Stefka Stancheva, presents her first book today. She is in Plovdiv at the invitation of the “Pharmacy for the Soul” club. Stefka Stancheva is from Kavarna, but lives and works in Sofia.
The book “The Dobruja Phoenix” is an artistic narrative about the personality of Yani Hadjiyanev, a Bulgarian publisher, writer, journalist, public figure and an active participant in the struggle for the liberation of Dobruja. He was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “New Unity”, as well as the editor of the newspapers “Edinstvo”, “Dobrudzhanski glas”, the magazines “Pole”, “Zlatna Dobrudja”. He writes short stories, which he publishes in the newspaper “New Unity”. He is also the author of the books “The Laughter of Dobruja”, “Susha”, “Dobrudzhanci”, which he published in Dobrich. He signs under the pseudonym Kaliakrenski.
“Where did I get the idea to tell about Yanni Kaliakrenski? To my shame, I knew nothing about this man. About two years ago, I saw an invitation that there would be a presentation of a reissued book by Yanni Kaliakrenski. I was in Kavarna, it was summer. I went to the presentation, I got his books. It became so interesting to me and so painful at the same time that I knew almost nothing about such a great man, a great personality, a native of Dobruja and a Bulgarian. I knew that he was born at the end of the 19th century, that he fought with his pen against the encroachments of the Romanian power, during the occupation of Dobrudja. There are two occupations, he takes the second one. At the same time, while I was at this presentation, I felt the personality of Yanni Kaliakrenski very close. He was an extremely humble man who did so much work for Dobruja.
Literally the same evening, I decided to start writing, but I didn’t know what I was doing at all, because there was very little information about his life. But, still, in the archive I found good things, useful, that I could use. Newspapers from a hundred years ago also helped me a lot. I had to immerse myself in that time and answer the question – why it was forcibly forgotten.
Yes, the book is a novel. I have tried to make a tangle between everything I know about Yanni Kaliakrenski and characters that are my fiction. These characters are not self-serving. If I have to represent some quality of Yanni Kaliakrenski, it is necessary to put him in a situation, to have it, there must be different characters. This is the idea behind some of the characters in the book. It also has a lot of smaller stories behind the main story line.” says Stefka Stancheva.
Currently, she is working on the second novel in the “Blessed Land” trilogy, which is also related to Dobrudja and is also titled “Dora’s Moment”.
Stefka Stancheva is a guest in the show “Free Entry”.
Hear more in the attached file.
