Brief information

 

Official site of the Bulgarian author Konstantin Iliev. Contains biographical notes, synopses of his plays and prose writings, essays, articles and interviews, press clippings, full and partial translation of the texts, contact and copyright information.

 

Born on October 16, 1937 in Gorno Pavlikeni (Bulgaria), he graduated from Sofia's St. Kliment of Ohrid University with a degree in German Philology. Konstantin Iliev specialized in Theatre Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where he defended his Doctorate thesis on the plays of Friedrich Duerrenmatt. He worked as a dramaturge in Blagoevgrad's Theatre Nikola Vaptsarov and The Drama Theatre Sofia. From 1995 until 2007 he was Head Dramaturge at Bulgaria's National Theatre Ivan Vazov.

He is the author of the following plays:
Longing For Colours (1961), Without You In October (1968), The Mousy King (1968, a puppet play), Music From Shatrovets (1971), The Window (1977), Basil For Draginko (1978), Easter Wine (1979), Nirvana (1982), Odysseus Travels To Ithaca (1984), Red Wine For Goodbye (1989), Lame-Leg or Lupine Holy Mother (1994), Francesca (1999), Beethoven 21 (2006), Golden Bridges and Sequoia (2011), The Observers (2015).

Books of prose:
French Donkey (1988) – a novel, The Defeat. A Chronicle From The Short Century (2003) – an autobiographical book, , The Memory of the Raven (2005), Easter Wine and Frankenstein (2013) and Words off Stage (2017) - texts on theatre, drama and politics.

He translates from the German (Brecht, Buechner). His plays have been produced in Austria, England, Estonia, France, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and elsewhere.

He is the recipient of the International Herder Prize for Overall Achievement (1996), the Helikon Award for New Bulgarian Prose Writing (2003), the Elias Canetti Literary Prize (2005), the National Hristo G. Danov Overall Award for Contribution to Bulgarian Literary Culture (2012), the Askeer 2017 Prize for his Overall Contribution to the Art of Theatre, as well as of a number of national theatre awards. Continue reading >