Literary Evening

Literary Evening
with a glass of wine

Presentation of the book ‘Nine Rabbits’
by Virginia Zaharieva & Angela Rodel

Special Guests: Virginia Zaharieva & Susan Curtis

On 21st September at 19:00 the Bulgarian Cultural Institute London will host the premiere of the English translation of novel 9 Rabbits by Virginia Zaharieva. The translation was carried out by Angela Rodel, with the support of the ‘Elizabeth Kostova’ Foundation for the support of Bulgarian literature and the British publishing house Istros Books, namely its Director, Susan Curtis-Kojakovich.

Virginia Zaharieva is a writer and psychotherapist. Literary critics have labelled her a brilliant representative of Bulgarian ecriture feminine.

Virginia Zaharieva is the author of Virginias (2011 Ciela) – a collection that brings together four of her poetry books, a compilation of essays Mercy of Small Mirrors (2009 Ciela) and one novel 9 Rabbits (2008 QM,Ciela) – a handbook for loving yourself. Her bestseller 9 Rabbits has also been published in English by Istros Books, UK (September 2012).

About the book:

9 Rabbits tells two stories, that of a six-year-old girl, and of her grown-up self: Manda grows up on the Black Sea coast during the height of socialism in the 1960s, raised by her tyrannical grandmother. ? raw, funny and magical tale about childhood. Through adventures and horror stories, the reader shares the complicated path of a child determined to explore the world.

Fourty years later on, we find that same child has become a woman, now living in a democratic Bulgaria and racked by an identity crisis. Manda attempts to cope with modern living, taste for luxury, experiencing processes such as fear, shame, PMS, divorce, marriage, forgiveness, aging, death and finally love and creative work as salvation for a wounded soul. For Manda, the world gradually transforms into a divine kitchen, where out of a mixture of characters, places, ingredients and situations she creates delicious dishes.

9 Rabbits is a pregnant book – inside it there is another small book containing all 29 recipes found throughout the novel in case readers would like to try them in their own kitchens. In the text itself the recipes are sensory instructions for concrete action – a form of reality that calms and nourishes the furious text as well as the hungry reader.

This is a book about standing up for your own choices. A handbook for loving yourself. A book about our debt to pleasure. 9 Rabbits is a story about life as wakefulness at every moment.