2024-03-22 14:50:34
Writer Alek Popov has died, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced. He passed away on March 22, 2024.
Here is the full message from the BAS:
The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences regretfully announces that on March 22, 2024, it lost one of its worthy members, corresponding member Alek Popov (1966-2024). He was one of the most original and talented contemporary Bulgarian fiction writers. Until his last breath, he tried to unravel the secrets of the Bulgarian word, he dug into the endless tunnels of the native linguistic space and through his works he showed and unfolded the multi-colored palette of the Bulgarian fine literature.
​Many times in his various interviews and talks, he stated that he is a writer who works all his life on the “levels of the language”. That is why his main tool is precisely the Bulgarian language. Alek Popov was very interested in the development of our language, in his enrichment and his magical ability to express and depict the concrete pulsations of the spirit of the times. His works elegantly proved this and provoked in the reader a desire for reflection, for dialogue, and sometimes for polemic. But it is precisely in polemic and in argument that gives birth to truth?
​Alek Popov’s books enjoyed enviable reader interest. It is no coincidence that some of them had a number of reprints, as is the case with his satirical novel “Mission London”. But let’s also add here his other significant works of fiction, such as “The Black Box”, “Mission Turan”, “Mythology of the Transition”, “The Companion of the Radical Thinker,” “Corporeal Weeds,” etc. In them, the author demonstrated his skill for discreet psychological analysis of his characters, his talent for leading a lively and engaging narrative, mastering the plot and plot of the story, short story or novel. And above all, he achieves an impressive ironic self-removal, encoded not only in the plot, but also in the linguistic texture of the work.
“Alek Popov is gone… I can’t believe it yet…
A friend and writer with whom we started and walked together in literature, one of those with whom it was easier to walk, of the best writers of the generation, of the most honest, accurate and bright. His short stories, which I especially love, and his novels are a step forward in our literature. Today’s Bulgarian literature lost half of its smile and humor with his death.
PP
We traveled together for many years, we joked… In one of his last letters on the occasion of a postponed trip due to the eternal drudgery here, he wrote to me: “I am really sorry that you will not come – when I think of how we traveled with you and Teddy … it would let it be a little like the good old days, when there were no such sick passions. I think that we among ourselves, few as we are, should set an example of a different style of relationship.”
Way to go dear Alec…”, wrote about him the writer Georgi Gospodinov, with whom they have known since their student years.