Absinthe 17 Preview: Theodora Dimova

This is the seventh in a series of posts that will preview the upcoming issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present an excerpt from a novel by Theodora Dimova.

From Liya, translated by Francine Giguere


It’s a disgrace! This country is an absolute disgrace! A fresh perversion — made in Bulgaria! A complete depravity of the mind! Yet another humiliation of artists in Bulgaria! Do you understand what that means! Do you understand what they want to force me to do! Intellectual, artist, man of letters — these are nothing but dirty words in Bulgaria! And because some of us still manage to preserve our integrity and not wade up to our necks in excrement, well, they’ve found another way to deal with us: we’ll carve them with a fine chisel, they think, they’re made of thin ice, the better to get at them perfidiously, in depth and from behind! You bastards! You bastards! You bloody bastards! You’ve destroyed us! You want to wipe us out completely, is that it!? You want to crush us?  READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.


Learn more about Theodora Dimova and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.