The novel “L’Homme Surveillé” by Veselin Branev is nominated for the 2010 European Book Award
The novel “L’Homme Surveillé” by Veselin Branev is one of the eight novels nominated for the 2010 European Book Award. In the essays category, we see the name of Tzvetan Todorov among the seven authors nominated by the jury.
Authors from all EU Member States participate in the competition. Eight novels were finally selected from 52 novels by authors from 23 countries. The other seven nominations are Ursula Prokop (Austria), Paul Verhaeghen (Belgium), Sofi Oksanen (Finland), Hugo Hamilton (Ireland), Andrzej Stasiuk (Poland), Per Olov Enquist (Sweden), and Tom Keve (United Kingdom).
The European Book Award was instituted in 2007. Since then, the following Bulgarian writers have been nominated:
Janina Dragostinova (for “MORTA”), Alek Popov (for “Mission London”), Mihail Veshim (for “The English Neighbour”), Zdravka Evtimova (for “The Arch”), and Kapka Kassabova (for “Street without Name”).
In her article “Life under Observation” (LIBERATION, 21 November 2009), Beatrice Vallet wrote excitedly:
“L’Homme Surveillé” is an autobiographic novel, which will stun you. It does not matter if you know the story it tells. It is a story that reminds of “The Lives of Others”. Like all “fraternal countries”, Bulgaria becomes communist, a country governed by a single party. In other words, a dictatorship.Branev’s novel is a painful observation of one’s self, but at the same time, it interminably asks the question why one should resist a totalitarian state. Here is the answer: In order not to lose one’s soul, nor the dignity of human creation. How can you do this? By persistently refusing to co-operate with the political police. This is where the book’s value lies, in the tale about the fierce battle for the preservation of one’s dignity. An absurd battle, which is quickly drenched in a Kafkian ocean where events and things would have made you laugh, had they not been so brutal, tragic, and death-defying.
Being a person of judgement, the author is worried about the future of his fellow citizens. “For a short time, secrecy, dexterity, cunning and servility became a basic model of existence, and this led to deep irreversible changes in Bulgarian character. It is still early to shed light on this crime which lasted for such a long time, for the frame of mind which had been crippled by totalitarianism, is still ruling.”
“L’Homme Surveillé” was published in Bulgarian, French, and Spanish. The cover of the three publications is the same; it was designed by the Bulgarian editor Maria Koeva from the Fama Publishers. Following multiple attempts to find a different design, the French publishers admit that the Bulgarian cover is the most suitable one. The foreword to the French edition is written by Tzvetan Todorov, a literary critic of world renown, who has been living and working in France since 1963. Tzvetan Todorov concludes his foreword to “L’Homme Surveillé” with the following words: “Today’s totalitarian regimes are either dead or dying, but the life experience of the people who had suffered under their domination is very much alive. It allows us to understand the surrounding world better, and to resist totalitarian practices emerging within the democracies.”
Undoubtedly, it is precisely the bitter experience of an individual who is deprived of freedom and the talented story of Veselin Branev about the evil which totalitarian regimes can do not only to a country, but to the individual too, that are the key to the heart of readers from different countries, and not only of the people living between the River Danube and the Rhodope Mountains.