Narrative
В темница
Not translated into English
Konstantin Velichkov · 1899
Synopsis
In Prison: in the aftermath of the crushing of the April 1876 uprising, a young schoolmaster from Pazardzhik is arrested and spends more than three months in the prisons of his town, of Plovdiv and of Adrianople. He recounts in the first person the abuse and the executions, and gives the insurgents, from Georgi Benkovski to Todor Kableshkov, portraits far removed from the clichés: some endure with stoicism, others give way to despair or cowardice. He also notes that Ottoman officers demand fair treatment for the prisoners.
Context
The memoirs appeared in 1899. Their author came from a family of Pazardzhik whose house served as a meeting place for the conspirators of 1876, and his elder sister, Teofana, sewed the flag of the town's revolutionary committee. The book describes tortures and executions without disguise. It was republished in 2026 by Kryg, for the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the uprising, with notes by the literary historian Ivan Sestrimski; it was its first reissue since 1977.
Who it is for
Memoirs in clear prose, by a direct witness; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as an important document of the Bulgarian past and of the repression that followed the April Uprising.