The Voice of the Book — and the Quiet
Temptation of Success

This is an important moment — not only because of the (debatable) superlative it contains. Over the years, I’ve come across all kinds of reviews of the books, most of them from readers outside of Bulgaria (where, incidentally, the book is mostly read by adults). Reviews come and go. But this moment — this one smelled like eternity. What mattered wasn’t just the praise — it was the snapshot of Bulgaria that came with it.

Namely: Bulgaria, a country of vast scales and cosmic proportions — at least if we go by the aspirations of its inhabitants. (Is there a more overused word in Bulgaria than “the most”? Whether it’s “the most glorious” or “the most miserable” doesn’t really matter — the point is, it always has to be the most.) So, this Bulgaria — a tiny plot of land, no matter how you measure it — is populated by kind and decent people, often quite capable ones. But its unfortunate fate is that the place is so tight, so steep, that while reaching for a little warmth in the midst of the icy crowd, they involuntarily press against each other and, like Schopenhauer’s porcupines, continuously poke each other with their quills.

They’ll say impossibly kind things to you — right after they’ve left you hanging on a hook for what feels like a small eternity. They’ll assure you of their professionalism and integrity — but only up to the limit of your payment. After that, it’s your problem. Today they lift you up, tomorrow they bring you down, and the day after, they’ve already forgotten everything. That’s how things have always been on this little patch of land, I sometimes think — and then I wave it off and force myself to forget. After all, I’m nothing more than an average Bulgarian, wherever the winds of the world may carry me.

So, like it or not, Bulgaria becomes not so much a mother as a stepmother — once it caresses you, ten times it pinches you. You deal with it however you can. But in that moment — that first unbearable instant of pure confusion — I wasn’t thinking about Bulgaria at all. Just a swirl of conflicting emotions was spinning in my head (a bit like that other whirlwind, from the Forest — if you know what I mean). My first reaction, strangely, was anger. “Hey, what the hell — if this book is so great, why the hell did you stay silent for a whole month, saying nothing and leaving me twisting on a spit, unable to sit or stand?” Then came the sneaky inner whisper: “My God, I’m greater than Julius Caesar!”

Both reactions, I would later realize, revealed how completely unprepared I still was for the burden of real fatherhood — both of my biological children and of the ideal ones, the books. There’s no guaranteed link between the scale of a person and the scale of the artistic works they may produce. Small people are capable of creating giant things — which, I’ve come to believe, can only be explained by the fact that true authorship doesn’t really belong to the creator. The great artistic works, the really giant ones, are nothing more than cosmic vibrations captured in human form. They aren’t human in scale — not if our fate as humans is to shine briefly like fireflies and then vanish. The small people themselves are just slightly more sensitive antennas. The rest is the work of God–Universe. That’s the wisdom time has given me.

Anyway — I got a little philosophical. Let me get back to the story.

From this point on, things started rolling like a steamroller — slowly and heavily, but with an irresistible momentum. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time. The people at PAN were capable and kind, but they weren’t in the business of handing out favors. You paid, you got. Fair enough — no haggling. I opened my purse again, paid, and was ready to sing. The book came out in January 2001, with strange illustrations by Mr. X’s son — clearly, I still hadn’t had enough trouble. Still, initial sales were encouraging. As far as I remember, about 300 copies sold in the first month, which, for a no-name author in Bulgaria, is something. I was fully convinced that soon I’d be puffing up Harry Potter and burying it nine cubits deep.

And that’s when the first seedlings of my future trials began to sprout. To put it plainly: I lost my mind and decided that no one on this planet was greater than me. It didn’t happen overnight — I don’t believe I am that simple. But the feeling — the rush of unimaginable power and cosmic force — filled me so completely that I lost all sense of balance and real judgment. (Years later, I wrote down a thought that goes like this: “The feeling of one’s own power is like medication prescribed to terminally ill patients — if you feel it much too often, you’d better start preparing for some kind of end.”)

And the end wasn’t far off — though it didn’t come all at once. It would take a few more years before the world around me began to collapse, to crumble like the proverbial house of cards. But that part was still ahead.

In the meantime, things around the book were developing in a way that felt almost magical, in several directions. The first was the domestic one — but I’ll come back to that later. Because the moment the book appeared in Bulgaria, I immediately began preparing for its inevitable triumph on the world literary stage. I started arranging translations.

Like it or not, there is one global language today — and it’s the only one that gives you a real chance to leave a mark or be noticed. The others, no matter how rich their histories or how great their cultural weight, remain essentially provincial, marginal tongues. If a text isn’t published in English, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist — even though, among the remaining languages, there is a clear hierarchy based on historical importance and cultural heritage. But the reality is this: there is one world language, and all the others are provinces — some more visible than others. That’s the world we live in.

So, English it would be. I found online some American kid who offered to translate, and we started working together like the blind men of Bruegel. In the end, the result sounded like a village fairytale filtered through Google Translate and a head injury.

I sat there pulling my nonexistent hair, wondering what to do. (More than 20 years later, I still haven’t found a truly capable translator — and for very specific reasons. If I don’t forget, I’ll share five words on that topic someday, if time and energy permit. But there’s hope on the horizon now — the machines are getting smarter. More on that later.)

Eventually, I remembered we had an English friend — someone who knew a bit about literature and even wrote herself. And so I started working with dear Lynn, cleaning up and rewriting the American hopeful’s impossible English.

I’ll pause here. The rest can wait. In the meantime, I began thinking about German. A stronghold can’t be taken by frontal assault — it needs a long, patient siege. Getting published in English is always a long game. You start from the edges, the small markets. First come the European languages, the literary sidelines. Then, if it’s meant to be: awards, festivals, tours, readings, guest appearances, and all the clownery. That’s how a literary career is built. There’s no other way.

So here’s what happened. Before the book even existed in written form, I met with Viktor Paskov — one of Bulgaria’s best-known writers at the time, may he rest in peace — and told him the story, which back then existed only in pictures. Viktor received me warmly. I never saw anything but kindness and generosity from him, though I’d heard plenty of other stories. He usually drank a bottle of vodka during our afternoon conversations, but that didn’t stop him from helping. It was Viktor who gave me the name and number of someone essential to the world of Bulgarian–German translation: Andreas Tretner.

In my opinion, Andreas is one of the two best German translators from Bulgarian — even though his first professional language is Russian. I called him that summer, sent him twenty pages of the manuscript, and waited. And one day, sure enough, he called and said: “I like it. When it’s ready, send it to me. I’ll translate it.”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

But I had no idea the universe was just playing with me, setting me up for another fall — one written in the script from the very beginning. Because I didn’t realize how rare this was. A real translator, a master, agreeing to work without a publishing contract, without any backing — that’s unheard of. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. And failing to follow through, as the Bulgarian proverb goes, was a textbook case of “I did it to myself.”

Well, it had to happen. I had to spend the next ten or fifteen years drowning in self-pity and regret. And I know this better than anyone: it wasn’t anyone else’s fault. I had thrown away the biggest chance of my life. That’s how it was — and that’s how it had to be. Otherwise, I never would have grown.

So what actually happened? To explain properly, I’ll need to go into the psychological details. I had just spent forty to fifty thousand leva — something like twenty-five grand, give or take — on all kinds of nonsense, though in the end, I did hold a small, beautifully crafted book in my hands. My first published book. It’s not that I suddenly decided to slam my wallet shut — far from it. But when Andreas said his work would cost another ten thousand — this time in German marks — my petit-bourgeois heart clenched and started spitting blood. I had simply reached my limit. And when another translator appeared, offering to do it for half the price, I told Andreas, with quiet resignation, “Sorry, this isn’t going to work.”

Boom. Crash. Fizz. How many times would this same story repeat itself? How many times would I pour time, money, and hope into new attempts to pull The Forest out from under the glass dome of the Bulgarian language?

Too many to count. That was in 2001. Today it’s 2024. Just wait — read on — and watch the show.

About six months or a year later, after I had found myself a Berlin literary agent — a very good one — one of Germany’s top publishers, Carlsen, showed interest in the manuscript. The agent had done a solid job. Meanwhile, the second translator proved so weak that I never even started working with her. Andreas, by then, had closed his door.

The only thing I managed to convince him to do was translate a few sample chapters. We sent those to the publisher — and soon enough, the reply came:

“So far, so good. Now send us the whole book.”

“But we only have it in English.”

“Well, if it’s only in English… goodbye.”

And that was it. I died for a moment. Then I came back to life. Then I moved on. Twenty-something years.

***

Things with the English version went better. Lynn — who at the time was between two university posts — gave her heart and soul to the book. And from the ruins of that disastrous first translation, we ended up with a smooth, beautiful English version. Lucky me.

And so it began.

I started searching online for British and American literary agents. I prepared thick envelopes, sent them out — then sent more, and more. And I waited. Once. Twice. Ten times. Twenty. Thirty. Basically, I was waiting for the tooth fairy to write back.

Eventually, the replies started trickling in — all standard forms. Probably only the addressee’s name had been changed. “Thank you for your interest in our agency… blah blah blah.” I got tired of the usual routes and decided to go rogue. I built a website, pushed it through the search engines — back then, you could still bend the rules a little; the algorithms weren’t all that clever yet. Soon, visitors started flowing in. I posted the whole book for free download and wrote to people: “If you like it, let’s give it a shot. Let’s bombard publishers with letters telling them how blind they are and what they’re missing.”

Laughing? You should be. It was completely ridiculous. But internet people are a strange breed — and, unbelievably, they took me seriously. They actually started writing to Farrar & Giroux.

I mean… they wrote to the Pope.

Meanwhile, the book started getting downloaded by the tens of thousands every month. Slowly, reader reactions began to trickle in. Not many — but always the same refrain, as if they were reading from the same invisible script:
“How is it possible that something this good exists, and no one’s ever heard of it?”

And I had no answer.
That question — it didn’t flatter me. It haunted me.
Because it was the same question that wouldn’t let me sleep.

Well — it is possible.

So. I’ll save the international stories for later — they’re colorful, and wildly different in tone and scale. For now, let’s go back to Bulgaria, where things were just beginning to… “gain momentum.”

Alright then, until next time.