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Christopher Buxton - Lora Lazar's murderous homage to Atanas Dalchev

2/11/2013

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November 2, 2013 by Christopher Buxton

I’ve been long surprised at the lack of quality crime fiction in Bulgaria, particularly as the yellow press never misses an opportunity to report lurid stories about underworld figures with colourful nick-names.
In the summer in my last trawl of Bulgarian bookshops to tide me over my UK winter months, I chanced upon “Грешният Квартал” by Lora Lazar.  I read the blurb. Could this be the book to challenge the Scandinavian noir writers that dominate the English speaking market at the moment?
The title is difficult to translate as “Грешният” has two meanings – “sinful” and “wrong” as in the sense of “mistaken”. Let’s keep with sin and call it “The Sinful District”, though as every district has its shameful secrets we need to keep the second option open.
Lora Lazar provides a deeply satisfying read.  Her novel keeps close to the conventions of the serial killer genre – an irascible bloody minded detective at odds with his superiors; a loyal young sidekick/apprentice; a meddling journalist who gets under their feet: an anonymous murderer always one step ahead and with a real flair for dramatic visual representation; a series of marginalised and abusive victims and most importantly a vivid backdrop of a decaying urban wasteland.  Lazar keeps the reader hooked.  Her tightly organized plot drops timely clues and red herrings.
So far so Scandinavian but Lazar serves up two elements that are uniquely Bulgarian. First, her sinful district is a post communist mess of some neglected old houses, panel blocks, disused factories and workshops turned into warehouses, hovels and broken sheds, a sprawling gypsy quarter, with a railway line running through it all and a typically Bulgarian predilection for gossip. Shameful truths of physical and sexual abuse  slowly emerge.  Second she has skilfully weaved into the story several of Atanas Dalchev’s poems, which complement the mood, the environment and the characters perfectly. 
I read a lot of poetry when I first lived in Bulgaria in the Communist years, but it is only recently that a Bulgarian poet recommend I read Dalchev. It was a revelation. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I wouldn’t have heard much about him in Communist years.  In the 60s just before his death he wrote “Silence” about the paralysing fear of those times. Most of his poetry was written between the wars in a no less turbulent period . His dark poems invest simple everyday features – windows, doors, balconies with a threatening symbolism. A shadow in the yard like a broken spear on the staircase reminds him of some undiscovered murder. Lora Lazar allows her murderer to educate his pursuing policemen as he styles his murder scenes around Dalchev poems. Lazar’s prose complements Dalchev’s subtle shadows, making the book a pleasure to read.

As in any murder story doors are very significant.  Here is my translation of Atanas Dalchev’s poem on the those everyday objects

The doors

by Atanas Dalchev

The doors, the street front doors

            of the ancient rotting houses

 you recognise them, don’t you,

            for how many years gone by

they noisily close behind you,

            when at night you come back home,

they make way for you as if to say

            “Please enter dear Master!”

They speak in strange voices

            anytime weekday or Sunday

From morning  through to night

            they sing through yawning mouths

when you throw them open

            and then you close them gently:

Oh, those songs and voices,

            already known from childhood

The doors sodden in the rain,

            rotting from water and winter

gnawed by numberless worms

            stripped bare by the winds

the doors with thousands of scars –

            colours and nameless letter plates

 with studs, knockers and brackets

and their rust running like blood

 

And last night with all its might

            a storm, unleashed in the gloom,

battered them like a wrecking ball

            and the doors were stretched thin

and through the night till dawn

            they were beating and rattling

like the wings of some black bird

            dying wounded in the shadows.

The doors, your very own doors

            there’s little point in locking them

alas you will never feel

            safe and sound behind them.

When the night time fills your ears

            and startled dogs are barking

they cannot keep you safe

            from Her – the eternal hoodlum

Christopher Buxton graduated in English and American literature at the University of Kent. He first came to Bulgaria in 1977 as an English teacher in Burgas. In three years he mastered the language, read voraciously and began to be shocked by the unfairness of Bulgaria’s low profile on the European cultural stage.
He fell in love and so has remained close to the country ever since, spending more and more time there, immersing himself in the everyday struggle with extraordinary situations. He has had two novels published in Bulgaria, Far from the Danube and Prudence and the Red Baron and has also written a number of articles for Vagabond Magazine on contemporary Bulgarian social, cultural and political issues.
Some of his translations of Bulgarian classic literary texts can be found on his website: www.christopherbuxton.com. They include stories by Yovkov and Elin Pelin, poetry by Kiril Christov, Ivan Vazov, Vladimir Bashev, and Christo Fotev. His latest project is to translate Wolfhunt by Ivailo Petrov. He is a committee member of the British Bulgarian Friendship Society.


http://christopherbuxton.com/index.php/lora-lazars-murderous-homage-to-atanas-dalchev/



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The Merry Cemetery - Lora Lazar's latest novel was published a week ago

16/10/2013

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  Lora Lazar’s latest novel titled The Merry Cemetery was released in October 2013. Publishing house “Iztok-Zapad” again highly praised Lora Lazar’s work, including it in its “Magica” series.

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Presenting Lora Lazar's work at the First Cross-Cultural Book Fair, Leeds, UK

27/7/2013

 
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   In the period 26th – 27th June this year Leeds hosted its first cross-cultural book fair for independent publishers, bookshops and authors.  The theme of the fair in its first edition is “Worldwide and Alternative literature”. The fair aims at bringing together various literary cultures, focusing on translation. Studies show that only 4, 5 % of world literature is translated into English.

   In the frame of the programme the young translator PetyaYankova presented Lora Lazar’s works. In preparation for her thesis she had translated parts of Lora Lazar’s “The Cursed Goblet”. Those parts formed the basis of her research titled “The Balance of Translation”. PetyaYankova’s presentation took place in the Arch Café, Leeds on 27th June.


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    PetyaYankova is 23 years old. She graduated from English Language School “Geo Milev” Rousse. She received her BA inEnglish Literature from Durham University in 2012. Petya continued her education by doing an MA in Linguistics at the University of York, Great Britain. She’s currently working on her master’s thesis.
    She was an active translator from Bulgarian into English for the student literary magazine at Durham. Currently Petya is a journalist at the online youth magazine ‘Europe & Me’, as well as an ambassador for “Identity for Bulgaria” foundation.


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Petya Yankova, Leeds, 27-th July 2013

A legend about a Czech knight and a Bulgarian girl lies at the heart of The Cursed Goblet

20/4/2013

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   Eighteen years ago the late Prof. Yordan Andreev from "St. Cyril and Methodius" University uncovered a Czech legend in which the main characters are the Czech medieval knight Milohnev and the Bulgarian young witch Lada.
   The parable is very dramatic and follows the tradition of medieval tragic love stories.
   This saga was published  for the first time in 1838 in the Czech Republic, where it was titled "Magic Lamp". It is about a young Czech Knight named Milohnev, who in 1217 joined one of the crusades organized by the Hungarian King Andrew II (also known as Andras II). Milohnev was lord of the castle Doubs, which was located on the left bank of the river Sazava in the Kourzhinska central area of ​​today's Czech Republic. During the hostilities in the Middle East the nobleman was distinguished for his bravery and unbridled honesty and he earned the great honor to be part of King Andrew’s personal retinue.

    On their return from the expedition, however, when passing through the Balkans, the Crusaders were stopped at the borders of Bulgaria by Tsar Ivan Asen II. As we know from a number of chronicles, the Bulgarian king set an ultimatum to King Andrew - in exchange for passage through his kingdom he asked for the hand of the daughter of the King, the Hungarian Princess Anna Maria.
   During the negotiations, the Crusaders and the Bulgarian noblemen met often and went hunting together. Milohnev was especially friendly with one of the Bulgarian nobles – Bogoris, in whose name we could trace the old Proto-name Boris.
   Once, chasing a big bear, Milohnev and Bogoris separated in the woods. Milohnev caught the beast, but failed to kill it with his spear. The bear, however, managed to attack him again. At that very moment in what seemed to be Milohnev’s last minutes, Bogoris appeared and saved the knight. So, Bogoris took him to his house, where he was surrendered to the care of his daughter Ladika.
   The young Bulgarian girl was a very skillful healer. Day and night she selflessly cared for Milohnev and they fell in love. When he began to recover, the knight asked for a peculiar object in the room. It was a metal cup-shaped lamp.
   On its handle, 12 male figures were depicted in a circle. They were holding a hemisphere with strange characters. The first silhouette was very beautiful, the second was uglier, and so  on until the last figure, which hardly represented a human being. Milohnev was very intrigued by the lamp, because while he was feverish from his wounds, it seemed to him that the figures whispered to him, and once he even saw them dancing around. Ladika replied that she could not tell him anything about the lamp because it was forbidden. She was the most precious legacy of her late mother and she should never talk about this subject.
   Over time Milohnev got better and recovered completely. Meanwhile, Tsar Ivan Assen married Princess Maria Anna and the Crusaders left Bulgaria. Bogoris liked the knight as a son and continued to lead the hunt with him.
   One day he invited him to a feast with some other Bulgarian noblemen. But in the middle of the feast, Milohnev saw with horror a skull lined with silver. Bulgarian nobles drank wine from it, using it as a cup. The knight was horrified when his turn to drink from the skull came, and he threw it on the ground. The Bulgarians immediately pulled their swords because that was a great insult to them, but Bogoris stopped them and explained that Milohnev was a foreigner and he didn’t know their customs. However the celebration was ruined.

   On the way home Bogoris explained to the Czech nobleman that it was a very high honor in Bulgaria to offer someone a drink from this cup. Still, Milohnev was terrified. He had noticed that the cup resembled Lada’s lamp and asked about the resemblance. His host told him that his late wife, called Asla, was a descendant of one of the most famous Bulgarian wizards. This lamp, passed through the generations now belonged to Lada. Milohnev decided that his young bride was possessed by some unclean force and her fascination by magic was a clear sign of it. So, although he was already betrothed his daughter, Milohnev decided to escape from Bogoris’ house.
   It must be noted that this is the third mentioning of the old Bulgarian custom of drinking wine from a cup made of the skull of an enemy and overlaid with silver. The first mentioning was the case of Emperor Nikephoros Gennik from whose skull Khan Krum used to drink in 811. The second case involved Kaloyan, who enjoyed drinking from a cup made of the skull of Emperor Baldwin I. It seems that the tales are not fictional, but real, and drinking wine from a skull cup proves to be an old custom, which has been preserved during the Second Bulgarian Empire.

   To go back to the story, after the feast Milohnev decided to leave Ladika. The very next day he prepared to leave. Bogoris insistently begged him to stay, and Ladika also tearfully asked him not to leave. She confided that she was already expecting a child, and if he would leave and her father found out about her pregnancy, he would kill her. Milohnev promised to return after two months and went away to his country. Even during the journey he got scared to think of any return, and instead tried to forget all his feelings for the Bulgarian girl. He went to his castle and never returned.
   Once he dreamed of Ladika. There was a wound on her chest and a dead child in her arms. Milohnev guessed that Bogoris found out about the shameful secret of his daughter and killed her. In the knight’s dream his beloved was dead, but she reached out to him and handed him the lamp, saying, “You're not my husband, be my heir at least!”
   Years after, Milohnev married Bertha, the daughter of a neighboring lord. The guests at the wedding gave a variety of gifts to the couple. An unknown girl gave Bertha a lamp and disappeared. After the wedding, the groom found with horror that this lamp was ... Ladika lamp! On realizing this, he fainted with horror, but as soon as he recovered, he began begging his young bride to throw  away the lamp. Bertha, however, stated that she hadn’t seen a better lamp and lit it up. Shocked, Milohnev saw in the flame of the lamp the dead Ladika with his child in her hands, and the 12 figures were dancing around her!
   In the morning the knight buried the lamp, but he found it again  by his bed in the evening. He threw it in the lake, he tried to break it, but nothing helped. Every night the lamp appeared beside his bed. Over time, he revealed his sin to Bertha, but that did’nt help either. Soon he took ill and died. Before his death, he predicted that Bertha who liked the lamp so much had also been cursed. Not long after his death, the prophecy come true - his wife couldn’t endure the dreams that began to come upon her after the death of her husband, and threw herself from the castle walls.
   The castle was abandoned. A rumour that every evening the ghost of the Bulgarian girl appeared there spread among the inhabitants living nearby. In 1420 Prince Vanke held out a ceremony at the castle, hoping that the evil spirits would be chased away by prayers. The lamp was smashed to pieces. In 1429 the castle passed into the hands of a new owner, but ghosts still appeared in the damned building. So, the new owner abandoned it and over time the castle was reduced to ruins. To this day the legend of the Bulgarian magic lamp and its curse is alive among the locals.

   This is the incredible story of Ladika and Milohnev. It gives us a lot of historical data; it is also full of passion, grief and cursing. It shows that Europeans considered the Bulgarians very skillful in magic, magic coming from the ancient times, magic brought from the eastern steppes with the first Bulgarians led by Khan Asparuh.


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A Borrowed Killer - the newest  novel from Lora Lazar

1/3/2013

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     Lora Lazar’s latest novel titled A Borrowed Killer was released in March 2013. Publishing house “Iztok-Zapad” again highly praised Lora Lazar’s work, including it in its “Magica” series.











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Lora Lazar's plays can be found online in biblio.bg

9/2/2013

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        The most famous  plays  by Lora Lazar Memento, Graffiti, Home   
        for Christmas, A Lesson for the Class can be found online  in
       e  - format in biblio.bg.

      The play Memento is available both in Bulgarian and English.

     Biblio.bg is а Bulgarian trade platform for e-books, e-magazines, e-readers, e-publishing, online reading and audio book formats.


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Lora Lazar's play Memento is now available on Amazon

14/1/2013

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Start reading MEMENTO - a play by Lora Lazar on your Kindle in under a minute.

Now available on Amazon.

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Lora Lazar's novels reached the Bulgarian community in Australia

26/12/2012

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   People of Bulgarian origin living abroad are about 3 million. Usually they are well organized, operating in various forms like Bulgarian cultural, educational and Christian organizations. Their primary purpose is to preserve the Bulgarian language and culture outside the home.

  Supporting their important mission Lora Lazar donated copies of her novels to the Bulgarian Association "Rodina"  in Perth, Western Australia.

   The Bulgarian Association "Rodina" is dedicated to the promotion and advancement of friendship and understanding between people of Bulgarian origin and people of all other nationalities and cultures living in Australia. The Association is a not-for-profit, benevolent organisation and it is not religion-based. It welcomes members from all cultural and religious backgrounds.

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"A Lesson for the Class" in Silistra

21/12/2012

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On December, 20th  Lora Lazar’s play "A Lesson for the Class"  was performed in the town of Silistra. Despite the adverse weather conditions, more than 100 people applauded the young actors from theatre group “Peter Pan”.




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Lora Lazar received a special recognition for her play "A Rose on Ice"

14/12/2012

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       In the third National Literary contest "Peter Kovachev" the jury chaired by Prof. Svetozar Igov distinguished  Lora Lazar's play "A Rose on Ice" with a special commendation in the "Drama" category.

   The National Literary Contest "Peter Kovachev" is held annually in December in memory of Peter Kovachev – a prominent Bulgarian writer and journalist. The event is organized by Municipality Pleven.

  The awards ceremony was held on December 12, 2012 in the conference hall of Municipality Pleven. Among the guests were the Mayor of Pleven Prof. Dimitar Stoykov, the son of Peter Kovachev – Robert, and a number of the town’s famous public figures.



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