Novel
Хоро
Not translated into English
Anton Strashimirov · 1926
Opening lines
— Той да си гледа свещите — клисарят: Капанови не са пияници!
“Let him mind his candles, the sexton: the Kapanovs are no drunkards!”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from chitanka.info
Synopsis
La Ronde: in a small Bulgarian town, the day after the September 1923 uprising, a wedding is being celebrated. In the church, during the service, two drunken cobblers, a father and his son, lean over the offertory box and jeer at the wedding: they lie, the son shouts, at weddings, at christenings and at killings alike, and the sexton silences them. In less than a day, the festivity, its rites and its dance will mingle with the violence that the repression leaves in the town.
Context
The novel appeared in 1926, the first book of the Zarnitsi series, shortly before the collection Prehod, and responds to the uprisings of September 1923 and the civil war that followed them. The police seized it at once. Petar Dentchev reads in it a drama that keeps the unity of place, time and action, in which the marriage and death of folklore, the lure of the underworld and the eroticism of violence are intertwined; Dimitar Mitov noted its expressive, feverish and fragmented style. After 1944, critics read it through the ideology of the new regime, and Radosvet Kolarov devoted a study to it in 1988.
Who it is for
A fragmented novel with no main character, written in an experimental style; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
Banned as soon as it appeared, it was staged in Ruse in 2020 and at the National Theatre in Sofia in 2023.