The inquiry carried out by the literary critic Svetlozar Zhekov with the poet and translator Kiril Kadiiski is a phenomenon in the new Bulgarian literature.

Book of this kind could only be created by people sharing the same views and equally standing vis-à-vis each other as Kiril Kadiiski and Svetlozar Zhekov, bound together for decades by a creative and friendly communion. To create such a book both the inquired and the inquirer should have clear aesthetic and civic positions, as well as the strength to stand up for them.  

The critic’s large-scale conception breaks up and goes beyond the (until recently) irrefutable rules of the genre, by setting new demands towards it. Following the experience of the great ancestors in the literary inquiry, Svetlozar Zhekov has contemplated and designed the work as a “spiral of the knowledge”, namely: from the perceived to its acquaintance and rationalization; from the first steps through the arduous transition, to the top of the hill; from the individual perception, through its social realization, to its universal recognition; from the topical, through its common projection, to its philosophical rationalization, etc. This very architectonics has allowed the two co-authors to build up, stroke by stroke, one telling memorable picture of the cultural and social life in Bulgaria in the last four decades. This image may be liked by some and defamed by others, but by no means can it be denied. For it is a literary, historical, aesthetical and cultural fact, relating to one of the emblematic figures in the contemporary Bulgarian and European cultural reality – Kiril Kadiiski.     

The impetuous and contradictory reactions of approval/disapproval, evoked by the publication of the inquiry, show that with their high professionalism and open talking (quite stunted during the decades of totalitarian regime) Svetlozar Zhekov and Kiril Kadiiski managed to inspire a new life to the specific literary genre. This response also indicates that the book will be read for many years to come as a genuine documentary of our controversial time, before being placed on the dusty shelf of the history…