Irina Papancheva

Pelican Feather (a book by the contemporary Bulgarian writer Irina Papancheva)

The main theme of Pelican Feather is passionate love and its many – often painful – vicissitudes, experienced through the eyes of a young, smart, sensitive boy – the child of the coulple that broke up – Martin. One of the remarkable things about passionate love is that it exhibits a desire for purity and […]

Opening speech of Viviane Defosset at Brussels presentation of Pelican Feather

I have now translated three of Irina’s works into French from English: the novels Pelican Feather and Almost Intimately, and her short story, No One. In these works, I found human beings fighting for their existence, often in very difficult conditions. They use short phrases, vibrant dialogues, an oral, everyday language, punctuated by poetic passages. They pose open questions with no hint of moralising.

“Almost Intimately” by Irina Papancheva

“Almost Intimately” is an autobiographical short novel full of youthful suffocation and with the desire of the 22-year old Czech language and literature student to understand everything, to live through anything. The main character is to such extent active and drunk by her own youth that she doesn’t have the time to look around, to […]

Emotional experiences in search of wholeness

“Almost Intimately” by Irina Papancheva (publishing house Kronos, 2007) could be defined as a diary of a female spirit, searching for itself in the exciting spaces of the university culture of the Sofia Students’ town, of fusion with the Bulgarian nature and also with Prague…The reader gets the feeling of a well-travelled Bulgarian female character, […]

The friends of Annabel

„Irina, congratulations for “Annabel”. This was the message which I sent to Irina Papancheva on Facebook together with an invitation to become friends. I want to tell you that this young woman already can put on her credit a huge number of readers which goes far beyond her circles of friends in the above mentioned […]