Novel
Летопис на смутното време
Not translated into English
Vera Mutafchieva · 1965
Synopsis
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire is falling apart and the Kirdjali bands sack the Bulgarian lands. The narrative moves from one camp to another: Sultan Selim III, who wants to reform a state that his janissaries refuse to follow; Pazvantoglu, master of Vidin, who dreams of being an enlightened prince; Kara Feizi, born among the subjugated, who rises by the sword; Bishop Sofroniy, caught in the turmoil. The novel is in two volumes, The Whirlwind and The Flood.
Context
The book appears in two volumes, in 1965 and in 1966; the author was then a researcher at the Academy's Institute for Balkan Studies, founded in 1964. It deals with the Kirdjali disturbances, to which she would devote a scholarly study in her 1978 thesis, and she herself said that the novel painted the chaos before she had an overall conception of it. The critic Mitko Novkov regards it as one of the very great European novels of the century.
Who it is for
A saga in two volumes of about six hundred pages each, to be read in order. No French edition has been located.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the best novels of its author, it opens her selected works, published in Plovdiv by Janet 45.
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The pages consulted to check this page.