Nineteen-year old Dimitar Ganev is presenting today his second book of short stories The Afternoons of the Lazy Lover. The book contains 16 short stories, which “reveal wonderfully the know-how of courtship “, writes in the preface male poet Toma Markov, gold medal winner of the European Academy of Poetry. Dimitar Ganev was born in Sofia in the summer of 1992 in a family of mathematicians. He is not very good at mathematics and the exact sciences but writing is his passion. He started writing at the age of 12 to defend his child honour.
“This is an interesting story. My best friend and I would constantly make up something to kill time and I got the idea of retelling comic strips, that is to write stories based on pictures. I shared the idea with him and he called me the following day saying: ‘You know, I got the idea of retelling comic strips’. I got angry with him because he had stolen my idea. Children at that age get miffed easily, you know, and so to strike back I said I would write a book. This is how I wrote my first short story. It was awarded and got published. And so it all started…”, says Dimitar.
He also received best short story awards from Helicon Bookstore, One Magazine and Mormarev Brothers Foundation. His most precious distinction is the Rashko Sugarev Award, which he got at the age of 16, thus becoming the youngest laureate in Bulgaria ever. In 2008 his first short story book Impersonal Stories came out. He doesn’t like talking about it much, arguing he’s changed as a person and writer. He also said the books had been sold out and couldn’t be found anywhere. He didn’t have a copy either. His second book The Afternoons of the Lazy Lover contains stories he wrote aged 16-18. The book got published with the financial support of Dimitar Birov.
A lover is someone in love with life who confesses his love to life rather than to concrete persons, that is women”, the young man continues. “I think the title is a sort of double bottom box; while reading one doesn’t know which bottom he will end up in. The dialogues in the short stories are real, which is interesting. I’m proud that I can remember conversations extremely well, which is valuable to a writer. Most stories are based on real events. I like writing about real things and appreciate the most authenticity in literature.“
Dimitar Ganev has finished Prof. Konstantin Galabov German Language High School. He is currently majoring in English and American Studies, also doing Theatre, Cinema and the Media at the University of Vienna in Austria. He is working as journalist in the three-language culture and media project Public Republic (www.public-republic.com). Dimitar says that despite his young age he thinks of writing as a profession. “I’ve never done anything else but writing”, he adds.
“I find it curious that I’ve started writing poems. It happened spontaneously although I’ve been reading poems since I was a child. As a general rule, I try not to write fiction. I limit myself and write only when I absolutely need to do so, because in this way my writing is really good and genuine”, says 19-year old Dimitar Ganev.
English version: Vyara Popova
