Anton Donchev

Anton Donchev was born on 14 September 1930 in the town of Bourgas, situated on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. He graduated from the high school in the town of Veliko Turnovo and in law from the University of Sofia. His father was an employee who worked for the Bulgarian postal service so the family very often moved from one town to another: Turnovo, Tsarevo, Bourgas, Pomorie. The young author was short sighted, and he was ashamed to wear his glasses, he didn't put them on until he became 12. He says, "I lived in an unbelievable world, I saw practically nothing and it was the sounds of voices that made me imagine different scenes and people's faces. It was very hard for me to communicate with people. I could not see them until they were a yard from me, and I thought they were shadows of trees. All that isolated me in my world that was illuminated by my imagination. I felt insecure while I moved. It was my grandmother Srebra who took care of me for my mother suffered from tuberculosis and she could neither kiss me good night, nor tell me folktales. Srebra is the name of one of the heroines in "Time of Parting". Anton Donchev has concentrated his artistic efforts mainly in the sphere of the historical novel in which he has been working more than thirty years now. He possesses a rich imagination, especially productive in retrospection attempting to provide answers to the major issues of the present and the past of the Bulgarian people, pinpointing the factors of survival of Bulgarians in the key periods of their historical past. Anton Donchev throws light upon the historical conditions, events and alternatives that shaped the formation of the Bulgarian nation and the Bulgarian national character. Assen and Petar's uprising (1185-87) against the Byzantine rule is the center of his novel "Awakening" (1956), in which the power and grandeur of the oppressed people are revealed convincingly and truthfully. Anton Donchev achieved still greater heights in his multi-layer, large-scale canvass, the novel "Saga of Samuel" (1961) which was an impressive trilogy, describing the fall of Bulgaria under Byzantine yoke, a powerful work of fiction analyzing the reasons and consequences of one of the first Bulgarian catastrophes. The author throws light upon notions that so far have been a taboo in the totalitarian state such as a charismatic leader, hidden aspects of the military complex and hierarchical subordination of the spiritual institution. Then the greatest achievement of the writer was born, the epitome of Anton Donchev's development as an artist: in 1964 he published one of the greatest Bulgarian novels "Time of parting". The novel had 18 editions in Bulgaria and 25 editions abroad - in UK, USA, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Russia etc.)