Непретенциозната проза на Асен Христофоров и проблемът за антитоталитарната литература
The Unassuming prose of Asen Hristoforov and the Problem of Antitotalitarian Literature

Summary/Abstract: The paper offers an attempt to analyze the meaning of the notion ‘anti-totalitarian literature’ per se and in its Bulgarian context. This is a complex phenomenon embracing several different trends, different types of writing, different political affiliations and aesthetic views. Also, there were writers that are still difficult to classify in the main types of ‘anti-totalitarian literature’: political emigrants, dissidents, communists that opposed the status quo, etc. One such author was Asen Christoforov (1910-1970). A graduate of London University, a young Bulgarian professor of economics in the first post-war years, he was dismissed from the University of Sofia, later accused of being a British spy and sent to the concentration camp in Belene. Christoforov lived a lonely life for many years near the village of Govedartsi, at the foot of Rila mountain. Nevertheless, in the late 1950s and later Chistoforov published several books. Almost all of them described the mountain and its inhabitants and especially the people of Govedartci. The paper traces the author’s percecution for political reasons discretely mentioned in his work, claiming that their literary merits are greater than their ‘anti-totalitarian’ criticism.

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