Fans, Flowers,
and a Chinese Tiger

I arrived in Sofia in May 2002 for my first-ever visit as a “Bulgarian author.” To my great delight, the team at PAN had done a good job preparing the presentation of the book: a few interviews with different media, participation in the spring book fair, a reading in my hometown of Preslav, and — right at the end — the absolute highlight of the whole trip: a meeting with the children from the “Ghost Forest” fan club, created by an enthusiastic and experienced teacher to whom I owe an incredible amount.

Now, the story of that fan club is something like the proverbial exception that proves the rule: in the Bulgarian cultural scene, something meaningful and interesting can only happen if a person — or a group of people — are crazy enough to push forward against the prevailing apathy and gloom. And that’s exactly the kind of person, to my great luck, Mrs. Sŭbka Bencheva turned out to be.

It all started when Teodora Stankova — the wife of one of the people at PAN — was briefly working as a teacher at 12th Secondary School “Tsar Ivan Asen.” Mrs. Bencheva, an experienced teacher of Bulgarian language and literature at the same school, had for years been trying all sorts of non-standard texts to spark the curiosity and imagination of her students. Mostly excerpts from classic children’s books — Alice, Pippi Longstocking, things like that. But eventually she grew tired of handing out the old stuff and asked Teodora if she could recommend something Bulgarian, something contemporary — not just Yan Bibiyan or Toshko Afrikanski again. (After all, her husband worked at one of the country’s leading children’s publishers.) And Teodora recommended The Forest.

And that’s when the surprises began — starting with the children’s reaction. As Mrs. Bencheva described it to me:
“I handed out photocopies of the text, expecting to wait a few weeks for the students to show some interest, and only then start discussing what they had read. But this time — to my great amazement — they started coming to me by the end of the very first week, asking for more. Just when it had gotten interesting, the text had already ended.”

This reaction — immediate, instinctive — would repeat itself many times over the years. Friends from university, whose children were reaching the age of ten or so, started giving them The Forest (and later the two following books), and would regularly report back: “They fell asleep with it,” “They devoured it,” and so on. Mrs. Bencheva had managed to awaken the curiosity and imagination of a whole group of children — no easy feat, from any angle. Today, those kids are grown up, many with children of their own — and now and then, one of them finds me online and writes to say they’re passing the books on to the next generation. Who knows — maybe a tradition was born.

Another memory I treasure is my meeting with the then-director of the regional library in Plovdiv, Vili Lazova. Even back then — twenty years ago — she was no longer young, but her energy and enthusiasm were purely youthful. That’s where the biggest groups of children gathered — and the larger the audience, the bolder and livelier the participants. It hardly needs saying that children are the most generous and direct audience in the world. If you don’t talk down to them, they open up — and will sometimes offer observations so sharp and precise, they take your breath away.

By then, I had learned a few tricks: I started asking the kids what they wanted to see in the next books. One said they wanted underwater adventures; another wanted a volcano. And I, like some apprentice Santa Claus, set out to fulfill their wishes.

Meanwhile, on the international front, much stranger and more powerful forces were beginning to stir. And here it’s time to tell you one of the most moving — and most heartbreaking — stories in the life of Firecurl. And in mine, of course.

It was sometime in early 2005. By then, I had written the second book in the series, and Mrs. Bencheva had helped bring about another small miracle — an excerpt from The Ghost Park had been included in the fourth-grade reader by the publisher Bulvest. (Probably the only reason the books didn’t vanish into Bulgarian oblivion like a desperate “Amen.”) I even attended the Children’s Book Festival in Sliven — hooray, yeehaw, a fantastic dance ensemble! But the biggest surprises were still to come.

So, sometime around 2005, amidst a small whirlwind of emails from all over the world, one arrived — from China.

Dear Mr. Enev,

I am a Chinese girl. I read your “Ghost Forest” on the internet and liked it very much. Can you forgive me for translating some parts into Chinese? I just want to share your work with more Chinese friends, and when my friend Aisitair read it, she said I must send it to a publisher, but I can’t do that without your permission. I hope you receive this letter. I will check this email box every day.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Anne

As you can tell even from this rather polished translation, Anne’s English sounded a bit naive, which initially made me smile:
“Well, looks like I’m not the only weirdo out there. There are others.”

And I didn’t reply. What could I even say? I stared at the Chinese characters she had sent me and thought to myself:
I’ll get up early one morning and learn Chinese by lunchtime.
That was my first reaction. How was I to know I had no idea about her strength and determination?

Weeks passed. I had completely forgotten the email — until a second one arrived. This time, no longer polite or shy, but openly offended:
“I put so much effort and love into this, and you send me off like that — how could you?”

Ah, my little Chinese princess was angry — really angry. That’s why I called her “the little tiger.” She was a fighter, bless her, with the strength of an entire team. And once she sank her teeth in, she didn’t let go.

“What do I do now?” I wondered. “Learn Chinese? What am I even supposed to say back?”

“I don’t care. I want us to turn this into a real book.”

Sure, I thought to myself, we’ll make a book all right — a toilet-paper book.
But since the little tiger had already scared me into surrender, I wrote her something polite and non-committal.
By then, I understood — this wasn’t someone you could brush off with pleasantries.

So I started thinking. I thought this way and that — and finally had a flash of inspiration.
Avram Agov, my old friend from university and constant helper through good times and bad, had just moved to Vancouver, Canada — a city which, according to the laws of cosmic coincidence, is home to one of the world’s largest, wealthiest Chinese diasporas. After Hong Kong was handed back to China, a wave of millionaires had moved to Canada, taking advantage of the country’s policy of granting instant citizenship to anyone who invested a million Canadian dollars.
In short: Avram was now teaching at a college where half his students were Chinese. And not just any Chinese — the sons and daughters of very wealthy families.

No sooner thought than done. I sent the Chinese manuscript to Avram and waited.
And what do you know — the same reaction as in Bulgaria.
“They really liked the story. But most of all — it had been translated into magical Chinese. That girl must be some kind of language genius.”

Wow.
I started to seriously believe in the vibrations of the universe — and began an earnest correspondence with my little tiger.
And she set out on her next battle: to get The Forest published in China.

Now’s the moment to bow my head in sorrow.
Because Anne — real name Dai Yongan — turned out to be extraordinary not just in language, but in life. She was born in 1977, and at the age of four, suffered a terrible accident — the result of inhuman cruelty by a teacher — that left her paralyzed for life.
She received several literary awards in China, and by the time she contacted me, she was already well-known — celebrated as a translator and writer of children’s books.
She passed away in 2015, at the age of thirty-eight, due to complications related to her paralysis.

May her memory be eternal.

I don’t know if I will ever manage to pay proper tribute to such a human being.
But one of the dreams of my life is to lay a small bouquet of flowers on her grave.
Few people have ever made me feel such deep gratitude — and at the same time, such profound sorrow for the strange and heavy fate they had to bear.

Those years — 2005 to 2007 — were years of joyful ascent.
Because the Chinese produced a beautiful edition, richly illustrated and published by a major house — which gave me high hopes… at least for a while.

But it wasn’t meant to become something extraordinary.
The book came out. A few reviews appeared, both official and from readers — and that was all.

The literary world is steep and slippery — that much should go without saying.
Still, my Chinese adventure was one of the most educational experiences of my life.
Never rush to count your chickens — not in spring, not in autumn.

The life of books has little, if anything, to do with the life of their authors.
I don’t know if that’s a universal truth or just how it seems to me — but my books, at least, refuse to be measured against my small human existence.
I have no idea whether my unshakable belief in their eternity is anything more than the scratching of an unsatisfied ego.
But I believe it. That much is certain.

And at this age, I no longer have the inhibitions to hide such an unbearable thought.

I believe.