Dimitr Talev

(pen name of Dimitr Talev Petrov). Born Sept. 14, 1898, in Prilep, Macedonia, in what is now the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; died Oct. 20, 1966, in Sofia. Bulgarian writer. People’s Cultural Worker of Bulgaria (1966).

Talev graduated from the University of Sofia in 1924. He had begun publishing in 1916. In the first half of the 1920’s he wrote for the revolutionary press and later contributed to bourgeois publications. The short-story collections The Golden Key (1935) and The Old House (1938) faithfully depicted the patriarchal life of small cities. Talev’s best work is the tetralogy of socially oriented novels of everyday life dealing with the national liberation movement in Macedonia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The tetralogy comprises the novels The Iron Lantern (1952; Russian translation, 1957), Saint Elias’ Day (1953; Russian translation, 1958), The Bells of Prespa (1954; Russian translation, 1957), and I Hear Your Voices (1966; Russian translation, 1974). Talev also wrote the historical novellas The Cypriot Has Arisen (1953), Samuil (parts 1–3, 1958–60), The Khilendar Monk (1962) and The Brothers From Struga (1962). Talev received the Dimitrov Prize in 1959.