Cultural centres and embassies will organise a series of events to accompany the Europe Readr platform.
Sofia with Alexander Shpatov
On Sofia Day, celebrated on 17 September, we organised a two-hour guided literary walk around the town's landmarks important for Bulgarian culture and literature with the Bulgarian author Alexander Shpatov, who is participating in the Europe Readr project. The walk was guided by Shpatov himself, who also works as a tour guide around Sofia and whose book #LiveFromSofia included in the Europe Readr platform depicts the town and its particularities. At the end, the thirty participants were gifted the book Live from Sofia and invited to peruse the Europe Readr digital library.
Gogol’s Disco is undoubtedly Matsin’s strongest work to date. His characteristically cryptic, erratic plot and intertextuality, which can be difficult for the common reader, has receded, though it hasn’t completely disappeared! The strengths of Matsin’s energetic inner world are amplified in Gogol’s Disco: a bizarre, dream-like atmosphere populated with colourful characters and absurd situations. Absorbing influences from history, alchemy, mysticism, and literature, Matsin here offers a clearer text, while not losing his ability to create a magical and grotesque world: one which won’t submit to classification by genre. By combining his sense of humour, absurdity and erudition, Matsin has created an original and liberating vision that even offers a moral: even when situations or conditions change drastically, life tends to go on and surprise us.