"This is a book that has taken 30 years to complete” - in this way Katya Zografova, Director of the National Museum of Literature in Sofia sums up the volume Celebrated, Forgotten, Banned. She calls the volume the book of her life. In fact, she is known as the advocate of those wronged by history and believes that writers and other creatives who are totally forgotten today often for political reasons under communism such as Rayko Alexiev, Chavdar Mutafov and Fanny Popova-Mutafova had all the worth to get into the group of celebrities. 

"Even when writing about classics I am trying to debunk a few harmful myths, to display unknown archival material, correspondence and diaries, because my work at the museum provides me with this different point of view to literature. Of course, in times of major manipulations documents could possibly be falsified or replaced. However, archival material is still a key weapon in any attempt to restore justice.”

Named jokingly homo archivarius Katya Zografova browses into the legacy of Bulgaria's foremost writers - Ivan Vazov, Peyo Yavorov, Yordan Yovkov, Hristo Smirnenski, Dimitar Dimov and others. In the meantime, however she also gives attention to a few little known but worthy writers. Some of them like Boris Shivachev and Matvey Valev were emigrants.

"In our archives we keep the exclusively talented works of writer and artist Boris Shivachev, who emigrated to Latin America in 1920s. He spent four years in Argentina and while on his way back he organized a riot of the poor on a trans-Atlantic ship. Unfortunately he was beaten almost to death, and his health was ruined. In Bulgaria he received treatment but never recovered fully. He wrote the Silver River, Letters from South America and The Inventor, the first cosmopolitan and homosexual novel in Bulgaria. His popularity rose, but he died very young and his legacy went into oblivion. In the meantime, he was not that quickly forgotten in Latin America. He had been a talented critic and expert in Spanish-language literature. He made the first translation of the novel Dona Luz by Spanish classic Juan Valera. He wrote reviews and essays about Spanish-language writers and problems. He also left interesting paintings. Unfortunately, he died at 30.”

This is just one example of how Bulgarian literature spans bridges to other European literatures. “I would call my book a book of dialogue of the Bulgarian literature with the European ones”, Katya Zografova says. The readers will most probably find out about the influence in Bulgaria of a few Scandinavian writers such as Ibsen, Strindberg and Andersen, as well as Slavic writers such as Lermontov and Jan Kasprowicz.

English Daniela Konstantinova