UNKNOWN ABOUT KNOWN BULGARIAN FAMILIES

On 18 April (Thursday) at 19.00 Bulgarian Cultural Institute will present the three volumes of the book "Unknown about Known Bulgarian Families" published by "East-West" Publishing Company.

Guest of the evening - Mariana Purvanova, the author of the books.

She graduated from the Sofia University, major "History". She had been working at the Bulgarian National Radio and the newspapers "Novinar", "Daily Trud" and "Weekly Trud" where she had been in charge for the "Generations" column for three years and a half. She published in this column her researches of the most famous Bulgarian families which she had conducted in the course of ten years. In the past five years she has been working as an editor in the Cultural Dept. of the "Monitor" Newspaper.

Mariana Purvanova :

"There are many people for whom the way and style are living is not a sufficient form for their existence. They need something more to give meaning of their lives, to provoke their mind and emotions, to develop their curiosity, and thus the necessity to broaden their horizons as going out of the orbit of their personal perimeter. The increasing interest towards the past of the famous Bulgarian families is an example for all these. Even the fact that in 2005 and 2006 when the first two volumes of the book "Unknown about Known Bulgarian Families" were published they had been sold out so quickly that the "East-West" Publishing Company had to print several other editions is a great proof for this.

 For us this was one of the first attempts to enter a completely new genre, a mixture of the classical history, the so-called "oral history / historial oral", the social anthropology, building "life histories / historia de vida", not only of certain individuals but of whole families. The success of Volume 1 pushed me to prepare a second one and later a third one. I had to make hundreds of meetings and more than 200 interviews and to spend many hours in the library."

The three books contain memories of the heirs of the 120 most important Bulgarian families with extreme merits in the sphere of industrialization, politics, culture and education in Bulgaria after the Liberation. The family histories of Todor Burmov, Racho Petrov, Bogdan Filov, Atanas and Ivan Burov, Ivan Vazov, Yordan Yovkov, P. R. Slaveykov and Karavelov are included in the first volume. The Armenian family of Tomasian, Shervashidze, as well as these of Simeon Radev, Geo Milev, Ran Bossilek, Nikolay Liliev, Pencho Obreshkov, Zachari Stoyanov and other are included in the second volume.

Part Three includes some of the most prominent families from Gabrovo, Plovdiv and Varna who have greatly influenced the development of these cities at that time. Together with the family histories the three volumes contain also information about Old Sofia and in Volume 3 - parts about the past of Veliko Turnovo and Varna. The second part of Volume 3 is extremely interesting - details about the personal life of prominent Bulgarian writers.

Many of these persons had studied in Russia and later had experienced the influence of the Russian state. Many Russians moved to live in Bulgaria and this was also presented in the book - their and of their heirs contribution and fate.


The three books are richly illustrated and some of the photos have been published for the first time.


Entrance free