THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a literary evening to be held at the DC Books store at Karimpanal Arcade, Statue, contemporary German writer of Bulgarian origin Iliya Troyanov will read out from his books which have been translated into English. The writer will interact with readers too at the function to be held on Thursday at 6 pm. The programme is being held with the support of Goethe-Zentrum Trivandrum. Iliya Troyanov, born in Sofia in Bulgaria, had fled the Communist land with his family through Yugoslavia and Italy and taken political asylum in West Germany in 1971. Troyanov studied law and ethnology at Munich University. In 1989 and 1992, he founded the Kyrill-und-Method and Marino publishing houses, which specialise in African literature. In 1999, Troyanov moved to Mumbai for several years, though he currently resides in Vienna. In the 1990s, he wrote several non-fiction and travel books about Africa, published an anthology of contemporary African literature and translated African authors into German. His first novel, ‘The world is big and salvation lurks around the corner,’ which includes many autobiographical references, appeared in 1996. In it, he recounts his family’s experiences as political refugees and asylum seekers. After that appeared the science fiction novel ‘Autopol’, created on the Internet as a ‘novel in progress;’ ‘Dog Times,’ a travel account of a visit to his Bulgarian homeland; and books dealing with his experiences in India. His reportage ‘To the holy sources of Islam’ describes a pilgrimage to Mecca. Since 2002, Troyanov has been a member of the PEN centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. Among other awards, he has received the Bertelsmann Literature Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in Klagenfurt in 1995, the Marburg Literature Prize in 1996, the Thomas Valentin Prize in 1997, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 2000, and the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair in the category of fiction for his novel ‘The collector of worlds’ in 2006. ‘The collector of worlds’, and his latest book, ‘Nomad on four continents,’ deal with the life of the 19th century British adventurer Sir Richard Burton. In 2008, Troyanov’s novel, ‘The world is big and salvation lurks around the corner,’ was made into a movie by a Bulgarian-led international team of directors and actors; the movie has won numerous awards across Europe, and has turned into one of the most successful Bulgarian movie productions in the last two decades.
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