Angel Karaliichev has been often called „a creator of magic worlds“. He is the writer whose tales for children bring tears into the eyes of adults. He used to paint in words creating a realm of goodness, humanity, natural beauty and plenty of warmth.

Generations of Bulgarian children have grown up with the tales of Angel Karaliichev – his works have become classics imparting intransient human values without a hint of didactics. There is hardly a Bulgarian child not to have heard of „A Mother’s Tear“. In this tale a mother swallow flies crossing thousands of kilometers to warm up and give water to its child. Another of his emblematic tales is about the Wheat Cake that went on a trip to tour its field. “Snow has fallen in abundance – reaching human height. It has covered the trees, covered the small cottages, covered the forest. It is frosty and scary in the field. Big gaunt wolves walk around the slope, eye the village where chimneys release thin smoke, grind their teeth and growl. No one dares to go there. And she, just a little cake, got out of the fire with a burning head, shook off the embers from her back and rolled down. Come on! She was off to tour her little wheat field…”

The characters of Angel Karaliichev are just like this – memorable and vivid despite the decades that divide us from the time they were created. The legacy of the writer includes short stories, travel notes, tales and novelettes for children. One of his most popular books is “Fairy-Tale World”. For it Angel Karaliichev was awarded an honorary diploma named after Hans Christian Andersen by the International Board on Books for Young People.

Angel Karaliichev is one of the masters of writing who would go back to his childhood to find endless inspiration: „My native village of Strazhitsa is 40 km away from the medieval capital of Bulgaria Veliko Tarnovo. I grew up on the shores of a small but swift and sparkling river which every summer after torrential rains would flood the lower neighborhood of the village, drown livestock and poultry and drift away the sheaves, hedges, henhouses and wood-sheds of the village people. On the surrounding hills, wooden ploughs slowly crawled on the dry land, as their yokes squeaked wearily. The male heirs would split their paternal fields turning them into ridges unfit for cultivation. Fields grew smaller and less generous by the year. As the land could not feed and dress all residents of Strazhitsa, a large number of its men would leave in early spring to earn money as gardeners in Southern Russia, Romania and Hungary. My father would work as a gardener in Transylvania. With great longing, we, three young brothers and a sister, were waiting for him to return in the autumn…“

In a children’s radio program broadcast in May 1966, the writer told listeners about his mother Rada who was illiterate but knew many folk songs and sang them at home “quietly and intimately”. Angel Karaliichev revisited the first praise he got from his Bulgarian language teacher – for an essay in which the young boy had written about the suffering of his fellow villagers during World War I. Because of the essay the teacher invited his pupils to his home offering books from his private library including Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen. This book virtually spellbound the future writer.

English Daniela Konstantinova