On new Kosovar literature
А conversation between Azem Deliu (Kosovo) and Peter Dentchev (Bulgaria)

➡ July 28, 18:30, FOX book café

The conversation will be held in English

Sofia Literature and Translation House’s resident Azem Deliu from Kosovo will talk about his books and the recent developments in Kosovar literature in a discussion with the Bulgarian fiction writer and a stage director Peter Dentchev.
What does it mean to be a young author in the region but still be older than the actual age of your country? Do stereotypes, expectations, and disappointments have a home?

The talk with Azem Deliu begins at the point where the expectations cease – short stories transform into brief novels, nationalism is reinvented into an ironic comment, history – into a mere occasion to continue to move forward, to read, to rediscover.

One would ask themself, do we have the right to continue to believe in the role art plays when in the Balkans, where we live, we are constantly faced with so many paradoxes and the answer may very well lie in the motivations of how and why one young man chooses literature for his profession. Azem Deliu as a part of the new wave from Kosovo but also as a snapshot of the region in this moment – a region, which we think we know enough but in fact know very little about.

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Azem Deliu, born 1996 in Skënderaj, Kosovo, studied Albanian Literature at the University of Prishtina where he was honoured with the prestigious Distinguished Student Award for his first poetry volume ‘The Funeral of Rain’ (2013). His first novel ‘The Illegal Kisser’ (2016) became a national bestseller and has already been translated into English.
His second novel ‘Notes of the Worm Smolinski’ has been shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature 2020 and is translated into several languages, as well as into Bulgarian. The book deals with the context in which the Polish bisexual writer Piotr Smolinski had to live in the nineties, where the author has been on a residency in Poland.
Interest in the author is growing in other countries as well. The French press have called him ‘a great author from a small country’ and ‘the new star of European literature’.

Petar Dentchev is a Bulgarian fiction writer and a stage director. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Тheatre Directing (2010), Master's degree in Theatre Art (2017), and holds a PhD in Theatre Studies and Theatre Art (2021). He is an author of the novels ‘Just Like a Man Kisses a Woman He Loves’ (2007) (award ‘Razvitie’ for new Bulgarian novel), ‘The Silent Sun’ (2012), ‘The Small God of Earthquake’ (2019, nominated for the ‘Helikon’ award), „Превъртане“ (2021, nominated for the ‘Helikon’ award), as well as the collection of short stories ‘Stories from the past” (2011). He has worked in the majority of the Bulgarian theatres and is a frequent guest at literary festivals in the region.

Photos from the event On new Kosovar literature:
 

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The event is part of the Sofia Literature and Translation House’s programme and is supported by the TRADUKI literary network and National Culture Fund, Bulgaria